As can be seen from the large bodies of water which store large amounts of heat than the land surfaces, thus have a very high heating capacity.
The changes in the sunlight intensity vary with various latitudes determines the patterns of the energy distribution over the earth landscape.
It's experienced that the places near the equator get warmer as compared to that of the tropics and polar s regions and similarly there exits a day and night variation.
In the day time, the average annual temperature reaches its maximum in the noontime from 2 to 5 pm i.e around 3 pm so it's clearly, understood that the earth absorbs this radiated heat energy in the form of short waves from the sun i.e just after some hour of incoming maximum solar energy.
This diurnal temperature variation occurs, particularly in the higher latitudes.