Radiative transfer calculations are performed for polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) using newly acquired PSC properties and polar atmospheric data. PSC radiative effects depend strongly on upwelling thermal radiation and vary from infrared heating over warm polar surfaces, such as oceans, to cooling over cold surfaces, such as the Antarctic plateau. Heating and cooling rates of nitric acid PSCs are smaller than ¿0.1K/day. Rates for optically thicker ice PSCs vary from 1.0 to -0.2K/day, those for orographically forced ice PSCs even from 3.0 to -0.5K/day. Frequently observed optically thick cirrus decks near the tropopause provide a very cold radiative surface. These clouds not only act to prevent heating and enhance cooling in ice PSCs to -0.5K/day and orographic ice PSCs to 2K/day, but such cirrus cloud decks also cool the entire stratosphere by up to -0.5K/day over warm surfaces, even in the absence of PSCs. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1990