We present part 1 of a two-part series on a detailed evaluation of the stratospheric heat budget. In part 2 <Mlynczak et al., this issue> we present radiative heating, radiative cooling, net radiative heating, global radiation balance, radiative relaxation times, and diabatic circulations in the stratosphere using temperature and minor constituent data provided by instruments on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) between 1991 and 1993 and by the limb infrared monitor of the stratosphere (LIMS) instrument, which operated on the Nimbus-7 spacecraft in 1978--1979. Here we describe the radiative transfer techniques used to compute the climatology of radiative heating and circulations given in part 2. Included in the radiation transfer calculations are heating due to absorption of solar radiation from the ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths and radiative cooling due to emission by carbon dioxide, water vapor, and ozone from 0 to 3000 cm-1 (∞-3.3 μm). Infrared radiative effects of stratospheric aerosols are also considered in detail. ¿ 1999 American Geophysical Union