Climate models overestimate radiation, impacting sea temperature and precipitation accuracy.
The researchers studied how well a climate model simulates radiation over the Southern Ocean by comparing it to observations at Macquarie Island. They found that the model overestimates shortwave radiation and underestimates longwave radiation, especially in summer. This bias is linked to errors in cloud fraction and cloud type representation in the model. The study suggests that improvements are needed in the model to better simulate radiation in different weather conditions.