It is well known that urban relative humidity has continuous decreasing trend owing to the influence of urbanization. The change of relative humidity is directly influenced by two factors, namely, temperature effect and water vapor effect in various urban effects. In this study, the temperature and the water vapor effects on the relative humidity change were analyzed by using monthly mean relative humidities for a long period(1961～2013) in Busan and Daegu. The major results obtained in this study can be summarized as follows. Firstly, the urban dryness was caused mainly by water vapor effect in summer. But, for the other seasons, the urban dryness is mainly due to the temperature effect. Secondly, the relative humidity in Busan is on the decrease until now. This phenomenon is similar to another Korean huge cities such as Seoul, Daejeon and Incheon.

The study selected 10 regions among major Korean cities. Then the study classified the yearly change of relative humidity of those regions for 37 years based on 1996 (from 1974 to 2011) aimed at high temperature days, and examined them by stage regarding daily maximum temperature. For large cities and small cities, in general relative humidity had been likely to increase at high temperatures of 30℃ or over before 1996, whereas it has decreased since 1996. For suburban areas, relative humidity had been prone to diminish before 1996, whereas it has been likely to either increase since 1996 or rarely some of the cities have not shown any change. The increasing tendency of relative humidity before 1996 in large cities and small cities is believed to be because of an increase of the latent heat of vaporization by the supply of steam from cooling towers established in downtown areas. Meanwhile, the decreasing tendency from 1996 is concluded to be caused by the change from counter-current circular cooling towers, which produce a great quantity of steam including arsenic acid, to cross-flow cooling towers, which produce hardly any steam containing arsenic acid. This change was in accordance with the modification and pursuit of an urban planning law that ordered cooling towers that had been installed on rooftops be installed in the basement of buildings in consideration of a “Green network creation” project by the Ministry of Environment, urban beautification, concerns since 1996 over building collapses, and according to an argument that steam containing arsenic acid could be harmful to human health owing to chemicals contained in the water in the cooling tower in summer.

This study examined urbanization effects and the causes of urbanization, urban population growth, increase of the city scale, land cover change, and human cultures and economic activities, using the daily minimum temperatures of the past 50 years (1961-2010) with the subject of Busan and analyzed correlations between urbanization effects and the causes of urbanization. Thereby, this paper drew a conclusion as below: 1) Due to the urbanization effects, the average annual daily minimum temperature increased as about 1.2℃; however, except for the factor of urbanization, the increase was shown as about 0.2℃. The occupancy of urbanization effects in the total temperature increase was quite high as about 83%. 2) Just like other cities experiencing urbanization, Busan, too, sees population growth and the expansion of city area as well as increased urbanization effects. First of all, correlation between population growth and urbanization effect was high as 0.96 before 1985 while it was lowered as 0.19 after 1985. Also, correlation between the increase of city area and urbanization effect was high as 0.64 and 0.79 before and after 1985. 3) Regarding the correlation between long-term land use change and urbanization effect, urbanization effect was affected greatly by the increase of city area (0.97) and reduction of green area (0.92). 4) Concerning human activities possible to affect the climatic factors of a city, this paper found the following factors: road length, car increase, power use, and the consumer price index, etc. And regarding the correlation between the three factors and urbanization effect, the correlation was higher in the consumer price index (0.97), the number of registered cars (0.89), power use (0.75), and road length (0.58) in order.

This study examines the climatological variability of urban area and the increase of temperature by urbanization using the observed data of Busan and Mokpo during the last 100 years (1910∼2010). The results are as follows. First, the maximum temperature in Busan during the last 100 years has increased by 1.5℃ while average temperature and the minimum temperature have increased by 1.6℃ and 2℃. In Mokpo, the maximum temperature and average temperature have increased by 1℃ and the minimum temperature has increased by 0.8℃. The increase of urban temperature appeared to be higher in Busan than in Mokpo by 0.5℃∼1.2℃. Second, as for the change in temperature before and after urbanization, the maximum temperature, average temperature and the minimum temperature during last 50 years compared to the previous 50 years have increased about 1.5℃, 1.6℃ and 2.1℃, however, the predicted temperature after removing urbanization effect was estimated to be increased by 1℃. The proportion that urbanization takes on the overall increase of temperature appeared to be 33% at the maximum temperature, 37.5% at average temperature and 52.3% at the minimum temperature, thus the proportion of urbanization appeared to be maximized at the minimum temperature.

Based on the monthly weather report of Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) and daily sea surface temperature (SST) data from National Fisheries Research and Development Institute (NFRDI) in 2006, heat budget was estimated at Gampo in the eastern coast of Korea, the region occuring the cold water known as upwelling in summer. Net heat flux was transported from the air to the sea surface during February to November, and it amounts to 345 Wm-2 in monthly mean value. During December to January, the transfer of net heat flux was conversed from the sea surface to the air with -56 Wm-2 in minimum of monthly mean value in January. Long wave radiation was ranged from 6 Wm-2 to 106 Wm-2. Sensible heat was varied from -36 Wm-2 (June) to 61 Wm-2 (February) and showed negative values from April to August. Latent heat showed 20 Wm-2 (July) with its minimum in July and 49 Wm-2 with its maximum in March in monthly mean value. The annual mean of net heat flux is 129 Wm-2, giving an annual heat surplus of 22 Wm-2. Thus, during summer, the upwelled cold water at Gampo, appears to compensate the heat gain. However the ways in which these compensations are accomplished remains to be clarified.

To analyze the water characteristics in the dry and wet seasons, the data for temperature, salinity, nutrients and chl-a were used, which were observed in the south coastal area of Korea during April to October 2000. At Yeosu in the south coast of Korea, the higher values of 35.0 psu in salinity were shown in March and April, the lower values of 23.0 psu in salinity were shown in August and September. The annual range of salinity was 12.0 psu. The total amount of precipitation in the wet season (July to October) was occupied 68% (about 846 mm) during 2000. The precipitation of the dry season (November to June) was occupied 32% (about 394 mm) in the year. In the coastal area, the salinity variation is distinct in the period of July to October. Based on this result, we divided the season into two parts: the dry season during April to June and the wet season during July to October. Factor analysis was shown that temperature has strong negative relation and nutrients show positive relations in the dry season by the factor 1, which explains the total variance of 50.6% at the surface water. In the wet season, salinity has negative relation and nutrients show positive relation by the factor 2, which explains the total variance of 33.5%. The bottom layer also showed similar to those of surface water in the results of factor analysis. These mean that nutrients become rich due to the freshwater inflow in the wet season. The low saline water is shown not only in the south coast but also in the overall region in the South Sea of Korea. It is suggested that the South Sea of Korea may call a ROFI (Region of Freshwater Influence) system in summer.