  The characteristics of the thermal radiation are investigated using a two -
component model, with the hard component being described by the Color Glass
Condensate formalism. The inclusive transverse momentum spectra of charged
hadrons produced in proton - proton and proton - nucleus collisions at LHC
energies and large - $p_T$ are estimated using the running coupling $k_T$ -
factorization formula and the solution of the Balitsky - Kovchegov equation.
Our results indicate that the thermal term is necessary to describe the
experimental data and that the effective thermal temperature has an energy
dependence similar to the saturation scale. We demonstrate that the enhancement
of the thermal temperature in $pPb$ collisions is consistent with that
predicted by the saturation scale.
