Hmm, good question. That's really high up, far higher than aircraft travel. I would guess that there's an interaction with solar radiation of some kind. Is it where the magnetic field deflects the "solar wind" perhaps? With the atmosphere that thin and pressure so low, I do think most heat energy absorbed near the Earth's surface would be dissipated, continuing the pattern seen on mountaintops. Thinking about this abstractly, I realized I didn't know why the Earth's core is hot. If it was formed by a lot of space dust accreting, it would seem more likely to be very cold. And if the sun is the source of the heat, it should heat the surface more than the core. So I have to guess that the same mechanism is at work: the intense pressure due to gravity is enough to heat the core beyond iron's melting point.