Abstract Arctic aerosol, cloud, and surface radiation budgets are highly sensitive to how dimethylsulfide (DMS) is represented in atmospheric models. We investigate the impact of (a) the gas‐phase DMS oxidation mechanism (simple 3‐reaction scheme vs. a complex gas‐phase scheme), (b) the representation of oceanic DMS (global climatology vs. detailed Arctic Ocean biogeochemistry simulation), and (c) the parameterization of new particle formation from marine biogenic precursor gases, represented by methanesulfonic acid (MSA). We find that the more detailed approach in (a) and (b) improves agreement with observed DMS and SO2 ${text{SO} }_{2}$ concentrations, and that activating (c) enables the model to capture the observed summertime maximum in total aerosol number concentrations. Together, these changes result in large‐scale modifications to cloud microphysics and surface energy budget in the Arctic, which lead to a very good agreement with observations of cloud cover and surface radiation. We recommend that climate models consider adopting these updates.