Spatial and Temporal Structure of the Urban Heat Island in Seoul

Abstract The spatial and temporal structure of the urban heat island in Seoul, Korea, is investigated using near-surface temperature data measured at 31 automatic weather stations (AWSs) in the Seoul metropolitan area for the 1-yr period from March 2001 to February 2002. The urban heat island in Seoul deviates considerably from an idealized, concentric heat island structure, mainly because of the location of the main commercial and industrial sectors and the local topography. Relatively warm regions extend in the east–west direction and relatively cold regions are located near the northern and southern mountains. Several warm cores are observed whose intensity, size, and location are found to vary seasonally and diurnally. Similar to previous studies, the urban heat island in Seoul is stronger in the nighttime than in the daytime and decreases with increasing wind speed and cloud cover, but it is least developed in summer. The average maximum urban heat island intensity is 2.2°C over the 1-yr period and it is 3.4°C at 0300 local standard time (LST) and 0.6°C at 1500 LST. The reversed urban heat island is occasionally observed in the afternoon, but its intensity is very weak. An empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis is performed to find the dominant modes of variability in the Seoul urban heat island. In the analysis using temperature data that are averaged for each hour of the 1-yr period, the first EOF explains 80.6% of the total variance and is a major diurnal mode. The second EOF, whose horizontal structure is positive in the eastern part of Seoul and is negative in the western part, explains 16.0% of the total variance. This mode is related to the land use type and the diurnal pattern of anthropogenic heat release. In the analysis using temperature data at 0300 LST, the leading four modes explain 72.4% of the total variance. The first EOF reflects that the weakest urban heat island intensity is in summer. It is found that the urban heat island in Seoul is stronger on weekdays than weekends.