If you are just beginning to explore the energy budget at the top of Earth's atmosphere, you might find it useful to begin with a discussion of the importance of the energy budget. Followed by a discussion of the global energy budget. The zonal energy budget is important and demonstrates that some of the regions of the global have a net radiative energy gain, while others have a net loss.

Images of the monthly mean albedo, outgoing longwave radiation, net radiation balance are available as measured by the NASA Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE).