A modification to extended proper orthogonal decomposition-based correlation analysis: The spatial consideration

•A bottleneck of the EPOD method for correlation analysis is described.•The role of the spatial distribution of the modes is clarified, and a procedure to take this into account is proposed.•This is started by thermally active zone detection using spatial modes of temperature.•Then damping of temporal coefficients is used as a spatial filter.•The procedure provides a more meaningful correlation study in the example of turbulence enhanced heat transfer.