Kristen's Classroom: Baking cookies in your car

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- We know Central Texas summers are hot but, are they hot enough to bake cookies inside your car? One KXAN viewer found the answer.

Charles Dickie told KXAN that he was able to bake peanut butter cookies in four hours on the dashboard of his truck last Tuesday. Looking back, our temperatures topped out near 107° in Austin that day.

According to the National Weather Service, outside temperatures hovering near 100° can result in temperatures inside of a car rising to 120° in just a few minutes, nearing 150° in about an hour.

Why the difference outside versus inside? Shortwave radiation from the sun passing through the car's glass windows gets absorbed by the seats, dashboard, steering wheel, etc. It then gets re-emitted as longwave radiation. This longwave radiation (heat) gets trapped inside as it has a harder time passing back through the glass. This is known as the 'greenhouse gas effect', the same processes occurring in our atmosphere.

Greenhouse gas effect: shortwave radiation put out but the sun is absorbed by Earth's surface and re-emitted as longwave radiation. This radiation (or heat) is then trapped by clouds within our atmosphere.

So the answer is yes! You can, in fact, bake cookies inside your car during the Central Texas summer heat. (If there's a silver lining to 100°F weather, this might be it!)