The aim of this paper is to study the thermal radiation effects on the flow and heat transfer of an unsteady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) micropolar fluid over a vertical heated nonisothermal stretching surface in the presence of a strong nonuniform magnetic field. The symmetries of the governing partial differential equations are de- termined by the two-parameter group method. One of the resulting systems of reduced nonlinear ordinary differential equations are solved numerically by the Chebyshev spec- tral method. The effects of various parameters on the velocity, the angular velocity, and the temperature profiles as well as the skin-friction coefficient, the wall couple stress coefficient, and the Nusselt number are studied.