How does it stay warm at night after the sun goes down?
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The surface of the earth, water vapor and everything absorbs the heat. Then it gives off the heat at night. This is also why deserts tend to be colder. Sand does not hold heat as well, so once the sun sets, the heat is lost quickly.
Just like a warm oven takes some hours to get cold, the heat that comes from the sun during the day takes time to leave the surface (floor, the walls and everything that got quite warm during the day).
The time where sun heat completely leaves the surface is at 6AM, also known as the coldest hour of the day.
The sun spends the whole day heating the ground and bodies of water, which in turns heats the air. The moment the sun goes away, that heat in the ground, water, and air takes some time to dissipate.
It’s like an oven. If you have the oven on, heating for a while, the oven does not get stone cold the moment you turn it off.
The same way the inside of your car stays warm in the winter even after you shut off the heat or engine. The inside air doesn’t go from 70° to 0° instantly.
The sun goes down and the Earth’s surface cools off by radiating heat into the atmosphere. The atmosphere contains greenhouse gases, which trap some of the heat that would otherwise escape into space. This trapped heat makes the Earth’s atmosphere warm, and this warmth is then radiated back down to the surface of the Earth, keeping it warm at night.
To summarize: earth just holds too much heat. Nighttime just isn’t long enough to cool off.
Eli5: let’s say you take food out of the microwave and it takes 5 minutes to cool off enough to where it won’t burn you.
The earth is your food except the nighttime is only 30 seconds long. If heat comes on every 30 seconds, there’s no way food that takes 5 mins to cool will ever actually cool off. It holds too much heat.
The reason it has this ability is because the earth is like a hot pocket. Have you ever felt inside a hot pocket after even 10 mins? The bread insulates it and keeps heat forever. The bread is the earths atmosphere.
eli5 again:
The earth is like your body and it wears a jacket called the atmosphere. It takes you probably 30 mins to actually feel freezing once you go outside. Takes time to cool off. If nighttime were only 30 seconds long, you’d never freeze or even feel cold much.
Ever tried to retrieve a big rock that been sitting in a campfire all day?
Rock holds a lot of heat, which takes time to diffuse. Earth like rock because earth is rock.
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