“…The ability of regional climate models to assess surface solar radiation (SSR) patterns has not received much attention despite the fact that SSR plays a core role in various climatic processes and parameters such as (1) evapotranspiration (e.g., Teuling et al, 2009), (2) hydrological cycle (e.g., Allen and Ingram, 2002;Ramanathan et al, 2001;Wang et al, 2010;Wild and Liepert, 2010), (3) photosynthesis (e.g., Gu et al, 2002;Mercado et al, 2009), (4) oceanic heat budget (e.g., Lewis et al, 1990;Webster et al, 1996;Bodas-Salcedo et al, 2014), and (5) global energy balance (e.g., Kim and Ramanathan, 2008;Stephens et al, 2012;Trenberth et al, 2009;Wild et al, 2013) and solar energy production (Hammer et al, 2003) and largely affects temperature and precipitation. The same holds for the parameters that drive SSR levels, such as cloud macrophysical and microphysical properties (cloud fractional cover, CFC; cloud optical thickness, COT; and cloud effective radius, Re), aerosol optical properties (aerosol optical depth, AOD; asymmetry factor, ASY; and single-scattering albedo, SSA), surface broadband albedo (ALB) and atmospheric water vapor amount (WV).…”