Cities in the heat: Unveiling the urbanized impacted surface urban heat island of South Korea's metropolises

The present study delves into the dynamics of SUHI in six major cities of South Korea. This study utilized the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Land Surface Temperature (LST), European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI) Land use land cover (LULC), wind speed, relative humidity (RH), city size, city mean elevation, and population density data. Findings of this study exhibited higher daytime LST compared to nighttime with evident trend in Seoul, Incheon, and Jeju. Similarly, a great influence of SUHI showed by all cities with averaged SUHI of daytime (1.94 °C) was higher than nighttime (1.23 °C). Notably, the daytime SUHI was more pronounced in inland cities (2.3 °C) whereas, the nighttime SUHI was more evident in ocean cities (1.29 °C). Findings of this study illuminated inverse relationship of wind speed, RH, city size (r2= 0.58, p