<p>North China experiences severe haze pollution in early winter, resulting in many premature deaths and considerable economic losses. The number of haze days in early winter in North China (HD<sub>NC</sub>) increased rapidly after 2010 but declined slowly before 2010, reflecting a trend reversal. Global warming and emissions were two fundamental drivers of the long-term increasing trend of haze, but no studies have focused on this trend reversal. The autumn SST in the Pacific and Atlantic, Eurasian snow cover and central Siberian soil moisture, which exhibited completely opposite trends before and after 2010, were proven to stimulate identical trends of meteorological conditions related to haze pollution in North China. Numerical experiments with a fixed emission level confirmed the physical relationships between the climate drivers and HD<sub>NC</sub> during both decreasing and increasing periods. These external drivers induced a larger decreasing trend of HD<sub>NC</sub> than the observations, and combined with the persistently increasing trend of anthropogenic emissions, resulted in a realistic slowly decreasing trend. However, after 2010, the increasing trends driven by these climate divers and human emissions jointly led to a rapid increase in HD<sub>NC</sub>.</p>