Why doesn't the sunlight supersede the effects of the bodies of water and the ground on the temperature of the atmosphere?

Question

I am not asking about why the summer is hotter then the spring. I do understand that the body of water on the surface of Earth needs to cool off and warm up, and that takes more time then for the atmosphere. I am specifically asking why the temperature of the atmosphere is determined more by the bodies of water and ground in the winter then by the Sunlight itself.

I have read these questions:

Why don't solstices coincide with temperature extremes?

Why is the summer, in the temperate latitudes, in average, hotter that the spring?

where Jim says:

A major part of the reason for this is due to the temperature of the ground. Furthermore, it takes much longer to warm or cool a body of water than a mass of air; even longer to warm or cool the ground and water.

where tpg2114 says:

There is also the fact that the Earth's surface is 75% water and water is a giant heat sink. So coming off of the winter, the water stays cold for awhile and takes awhile to heat up. This is why spring is much cooler than fall. There is considerable lag between the peak heating and the hottest temperatures due to the ability of the oceans to store energy.

Based on these answers, the winter Solstice, Dec 21st, could still be determined by the Sunlight.

Ultimately it comes down to the power of Sunlight vs the power of the bodies of water and ground. And it seems like the bodies of water and the ground win.

But the Sunlight affects almost each and every particle inside the atmosphere directly through scattering, transferring the photons' energies directly to the molecules and heating them up.

Now the bodies of water and the ground only interact with the atmosphere at the lowest layer, but not inside the atmosphere.

So my reasoning is, that the Sunlight should be able to supersede (because Sunlight directly interacts with all layers of the atmosphere) the effects of the bodies of water and the ground and Sunlight should be the main cause and should mainly determine the temperature of the atmosphere.

Infrared radiation is popularly known as "heat radiation",[21] but light and electromagnetic waves of any frequency will heat surfaces that absorb them. Infrared light from the Sun accounts for 49%[22] of the heating of Earth, with the rest being caused by visible light that is absorbed then re-radiated at longer wavelengths. Visible light or ultraviolet-emitting lasers can char paper and incandescently hot objects emit visible radiation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared

Based on the comments, the light from the Sun heats more efficiently the solids and liquids on Earth, then the gases (atmosphere) directly, thus the energy from the Sunlight first transforms into the vibrational and rotational energies of the waters and the ground, and those heat up the air (because they are in direct contact with the air). Is this reasoning correct?

Question:

1. Why doesn't the Sunlight supersede the effects of the bodies of water and the ground on the temperature of the atmosphere?

Answer 1

The sunlight heats the air only a negligible amount.

In response to one of your comments, temperature is defined by the kinetic energy of molecules (it also has an equivalent statistical definition in terms of multiplicities but I will not get into that), not by light wavelengths: infrared light is radiated by objects with a certain temperature range, but all wavelengths of light carry energy; the emitted lightwave radiated from "warm" objects depends on the temperature of the object. To say "the sunlight inlcudes infrared" means nothing in terms of heat: infrared light is not hot, it is light, it does not have a temperature. All wavelengths of light carry energy, and when they are absorbed, the absorbing particles gain kinetic energy and thus their temperature increases.

You know infrared is associated with heat because relatively cold objects (like animals) are at a temperature where the radiated lightwave is infrared. But hot objects radiate visible light when they become warm (like incandescent lightbulbs).

The air absorbs a negligible amount of light, but it does absorb certain (mainly non-visible) wavelengths. Especially because the air is not very dense compared to the ground, and because the ground absorbs visible light (higher energy than infrared) you can pretend that the air doesn't get warmed by the sun's light at all.

The end result is that the sun radiates energy, and radiation is absorbed which translates to an increase in temperature, and because air is not dense, the amount of energy absorbed is negligible compared the energy transfered to the air via conduction (the transfer of heat between the air and the ground when they are in physical contact). In addition, the transfer of heat to the ground via absorption of radiation from the sun is also significantly greater than the transfer of heat to the air via the absorbtion of radiation from the sun.