Pavement surface temperature is critical to the pavement performance and the development of cool pavements. The variations of the pavement surface temperature have been documented in numerous empirical models. These models, however, exclude critical parameters like albedo and thermal inertia but include many empirical parameters that have no thermo-physical meanings. This study presents a theoretical model to predict the surface temperature of pavements and validates it against field data and numerical results from the existing studies. It is found that the amplitude, maximum, and minimum of the pavement surface temperature increase linearly with the pavement surface absorptivity, the daily zenith incident solar irradiation, and the reciprocal thermal inertia. Among these, raising the pavement albedo is more effective to reduce the pavement surface temperature than increasing the pavement thermal inertia. The model has practical meanings to predicting the maximum, minimum, and amplitude of the pavement surface temperature and to developing cool pavements. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.