Twenty-Five Years of Air Quality in Bangladesh: Trends, Seasonality, and Spatial Pollution Regimes

[2608.11652] Twenty-Five Years of Air Quality in Bangladesh: Trends, Seasonality, and Spatial Pollution Regimes Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Search arXiv Press Enter to search · Advanced search Physics > Physics and Society arXiv:2608.11652 (physics) This paper has been withdrawn by Md Rafid Islam [Submitted on 12 Aug 2026 ( v1 ), last revised 31 Aug 2026 (this version, v3)] Title: Twenty-Five Years of Air Quality in Bangladesh: Trends, Seasonality, and Spatial Pollution Regimes Authors: Md Rafid Islam , Rafsan Jany , Md. Siyam Bhuiyan , Rafid Bin Zaman , Mohammad Saifuddin , Sabrina Sultana View a PDF of the paper titled Twenty-Five Years of Air Quality in Bangladesh: Trends, Seasonality, and Spatial Pollution Regimes, by Md Rafid Islam and 4 other authors No PDF available, click to view other formats Abstract: Air pollution is one of Bangladesh's most pressing environmental problems, yet few studies have examined it at a national scale over a long time span. To describe trends, seasonality, geographic patterns, and pollution regimes, this study examines 25 years of hourly air quality data (2000-2025), covering over 3.19 million records, eight pollutants, and 103 cities monitored from 2022 onward following expansion from a single Dhaka station. The composite AQI series showed no significant long-term trend, an artifact of this network expansion rather than a real flattening of pollution, since Dhaka's own AQI rose steadily before the network grew. Seasonality was strong and highly significant, as AQI peaked in January (162.26) and fell to its lowest in July (61.47), tracking the dry and monsoon seasons. Geographically, southeastern coastal cities, including Teknaf and Bandarban, consistently recorded the lowest AQI levels. Dhaka remained the most polluted city, and air quality improved progressively with distance from the capital. K-means clustering of city-level AQI trajectories identified four distinct pollution regimes, ranging from cleaner coastal regions to a rapidly deteriorating Dhaka-Narsingdi cluster with an average increase of 1.84 AQI per year. Correlation analysis showed that PM2.5 and PM10 were the dominant contributors to AQI variation, and so combustion-related emissions are the primary target for air quality management and policy intervention. Comments: I have decided to withdraw this manuscript due to methodological limitations, including the misleading 25-year national characterization, insufficient consideration of temporal and spatial dependence, inconsistent uncertainty reporting, and limited technical contribution. A substantial revision is needed to strengthen the analysis and better align the study's scope with its claims Subjects: Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2608.11652 [physics.soc-ph] (or arXiv:2608.11652v3 [physics.soc-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.11652 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Md Rafid Islam [ view email ] [v1] Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:50:57 UTC (1,368 KB) [v2] Sat, 15 Aug 2026 05:28:27 UTC (1,368 KB) [v3] Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:26:00 UTC (1 KB) (withdrawn) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Twenty-Five Years of Air Quality in Bangladesh: Trends, Seasonality, and Spatial Pollution Regimes, by Md Rafid Islam and 4 other authors Withdrawn No license for this version due to withdrawn Current browse context: physics.soc-ph < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: physics References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... 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