Why at night is a road surface likely to experience lower surface temperatures than a pasture?

Question

Clay-land pasture (not sure if that affects it!) and I need to explain it using simple energy budget factors such as latent heat, sensible heat, solar radiation, reflected radiation, heat absorbed into the soil and outgoing long wave radiation... any ideas?!

Answer 1

It partly depends on the time of night. Because road surface absorbs heat and gets hotter because the grass surface has more moisture and absorbs light for growth. At night, the road surface radiates heat faster because it lacks the insulating qualities of grass and soil with air in it loses heat slowly. Eventually the road gets colder than the grassy area, closer to the air temp.