Technically, on the solstice the sun is warming up the hemisphere for the longest/shortest time…
In: Planetary Science
Imagine the temperature is like the water level in a leaky bucket, and the heat from the sun is you filling that bucket. You fill it slower in the winter, faster in the spring, fastest on the summer solstice, and then slow back down as you go through summer and into fall.
But the fill level of the bucket isn’t maxed out when you’re adding at the fastest — as long as you’re filling it faster than it’s leaking out, you’re still adding more water to it. It’s not until you’re filling up the bucket *slower* than it’s leaking that it will actually drop in water level.
The local temperature works largely the same way. A lot more heat energy is being added than is being shed during the summer solstice, but even weeks after, there’s still more gain than shed (on average), so it continues to get hotter. Only once you start shedding temperature faster than you’re gaining it will the temperature start to go down.
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