A prognostic skin sea surface temperature (SST) scheme produces a mean SST diurnal cycle of < 0.5 K over most oceanic regions and > 0.5 K primarily in tropical and subtropical oceans of the summer hemisphere with isolated areas of > 2 K when implemented into the Community Atmosphere Model. The diurnal cycle in air temperature is substantially increased over regions with large skin SST diurnal cycles, and the hourly maximum precipitation rate is significantly increased over the Bay of Bengal and the western Pacific in boreal summer. These changes to the diurnal cycle in SST affect the seasonal climatologies in the model with improved seasonal mean precipitation mainly in the tropics following similar patterns to the hourly maximum precipitation rates. Similar but smaller changes are produced in the COLA coupled climate model and the ECMWF model.