The question pretty much sums it up. How TF is the asphalt 20-40° hotter than the air when it’s super hot?
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The first thing to understand is that it isn’t the air that’s heating the concrete, it’s the sun.
Sunlight does heat the air, but for the most part sunlight just passes through the air and hits the ground
Concrete is just very efficient at absorbing heat compared to air, so when it gets baked by the sun all day it can get up to very high temperatures.
A lot of the ambient air temperature actually comes from radiant heat coming from the ground interacting with the air, not from the sun heating the air. This is in part why it gets colder at higher altitudes despite the sun hitting that air first. There’s less radiant heat from the ground heating the air up there, that and the air is thinner.
When nightfall hits it isn’t the air temperature that keeps the planet warm, it’s the radiant heat coming off everything else. The ground, buildings, trees, etc..
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