Temp files for simple queries

Hello all,

We have a small Google Cloud SQL PostgreSQL 11 instance.
The instance is configured with 8G of memory and 4 vCPUs, work_mem is 4MB.

I was wondering why the instance uses disk temp files for such a small
amount of data (see size in the log below)?

I suppose that it's not only the work_mem limit that could trigger disk
temp file creation or the reported SQL statement is not the only one
that contributes to it:

I 2021-06-22T09:12:59.164913Z 2021-06-22 09:12:59.163 UTC [1957798]:
[2-1] db=<db>,user=<user> STATEMENT: SELECT c1, c2 FROM schema1.t1 WHERE
c1 >= $1 ORDER BY c1
I 2021-06-22T09:12:59.164379Z 2021-06-22 09:12:59.163 UTC [1957798]:
[1-1] db=<db>,user=<user> LOG: temporary file: path
"base/pgsql_tmp/pgsql_tmp1957798.0", size 7380992

The t1 table (table and column names have been masked for privacy)
occupies only  440 kB and has 160 records.

Best regards
Dimitre