Why is there so much difference in day and night temperature in a desert and weathering is more effective in dry and cold area?
Sand cannot hold the heat. It acts like a mirror to the sun. During the daytime, it stays warm, and when the Sun is absent it loses all its heat making the nights colder. There's nothing in the desert that can either absorb heat from the sun or hold it on the surface when the sun is set. .Because the air in the desert is so dry, heat departs quickly at night, and the temperature can vary dramatically from day tonight. Dry climates promote rapid chemical weathering and wet climate provide good conditions for physical or mechanical weathering. A location with a dry surface will tend to have larger temperature differences between day and night compared to a location with a wetter surface. Wet surfaces tend to stay cooler during the day because much of the sun's energy is used to evaporate water, rather than heat the surface.
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