Why is it the coldest temperature right as the sun is coming up as opposed to 12- 3 am when its the darkest?
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The way I picture it is as follows: imagine the Earth is a glass, and the current “heat” of the Earth is the water in the glass.
The Earth constantly dissipates heat into the atmosphere : there is a hole in the bottom of the glass from which water drips out.
The Sun heats the Earth: it’s adding water into the glass to fill it up.
When the sun is very low over the horizon, it fills the glass more slowly than the glass is being emptied by the hole at the bottom. When the sun is reasonably high over the horizon, it fills the glass more rapidly than it is being emptied by the hole.
So essentially from the end of the day, the glass starts emptying, getting more and more empty through the night and indeed continuing to empty for a while after sunrise, at which point the level is at its lowest before the sun tops it up and the process restarts.
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