Grazing exclusion is widely applied to restore degraded grasslands, and its effects on near surface wind speed and net radiation alter the distribution of heat and moisture in the air. However, the dominant roles of aerodynamic and radiative processes and their mechanisms remain unclear. We conducted experiments on a heavily grazed plot and an adjacent grazing excluded plot in a semi arid grassland. We compared cases where air temperature at 0.2 m exceeded that at 2 m (Delta T > 0) with cases characterized by an inverted temperature gradient (Delta T < 0), and examined the relationships among Delta T, the humidity gradient (Delta RH), net radiation (Rn), and the wind speed gradient (Delta V). At the daily scale, Delta RH in the grazing excluded plot was consistently higher than in the grazed plot across all Delta T scenarios. Structural equation modeling indicated that Delta RH had a significant positive effect on Delta T during the growing season, whereas in the non-growing season Delta RH was significantly negatively correlated with Delta T only in the grazing excluded plot under Delta T < 0. Meanwhile, Rn dominated Delta T when Delta T > 0, whereas Delta V-2(-)0.2 m exerted a stronger influence when Delta T < 0. Furthermore, time-lag analysis revealed hourly scale shifts in the dominance of aerodynamic and radiative processes, highlighting the influences of the growing season and grazing management. These results indicate that aerodynamic and radiative processes drive differences in air water-heat transport across temporal scales, and they highlight the role of grazing strategies in reshaping the hydrothermal environment of grasslands.