Exploring the relationship between particulate matter, CO, SO2, NO2, O3 and urban heat island in Seoul, Korea

Highlights: • Interactions between UHI and air pollutant concentrations are explored. • UHI is positively correlated with common primary air pollutants. • UHI is negatively correlated with ground-level ${\text{O}}_3$ concentrations. • Seasonal effects are stronger in autumn and winter season than in spring. • The relationship between UHI and air pollutant concentrations is weakest in summer. Urban environments face two challenging problems that are parallel in nature but yet with compelling potential synergistic interactions; urban heat island (UHI) and air pollution. We explore these interactions using in-situ temperature and air pollution data collected from 13 monitoring stations for nine years. Through regression analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests, we found that carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and particulate matter (PM) show positive correlations with UHI intensity (UHII). At the same time, Ozone (O₃) was negatively correlated with UHII. Moreover, there was a substantial seasonal effect on the strength of the correlations between UHI and air pollution, with some air pollutants showing strong associations with UHI during certain seasons (i.e., winter and autumn). The strongest interactions were observed for NO₂ (R² = 0.176) and PM10 (R² = 0.596) during the wintertime and for SO₂ (R² = 0.849), CO (R² = 0.346), PM2.5 $$ (R² = 0.695) and O₃ (R² = 0.512) during autumn. Understanding such interactions is essential for urban climate studies and our study provides a basis for scientific discussions on integrative mitigation strategies for both UHI and air pollution in Seoul city.