The spatial and temporal changes of SO 2 regimes over China during 2005 to 2016 and their associated driving mechanism are investigated based on a state-of-the-art retrieval dataset. Climatological SO 2 exhibits pronounced seasonal and regional variations, with higher loadings in wintertime and two prominent maxima centered in the North China Plain and the Cheng-Yu District. In the last decade, overall SO 2 decreasing trends have been reported nationwide, with spatially varying downward rates according to a general rule – the higher the SO 2 loading, the more significant the decrease. However, such decline is in fact not monotonic, but instead four distinct temporal regimes can be identified by empirical orthogonal function analysis. After an initial rise at the beginning, SO 2 in China undergoes two sharp drops in the periods 2007–2008 and 2014–2016, amid which 5-year moderate rebounding or stagnation is sustained. Despite spatial coherent behaviors, different mechanisms are tied to North China and South China, delimited roughly by the Yangtze River. In North China, the same four regimes are detected in the time series of emission that is expected to drive the regime of atmospheric SO 2 , with a percentage of explained variance amounting to 81 %. Out of total emission, those from industrial sector dominate SO 2 variation throughout the whole period, while household emission fluctuates little until 2008 but afterwards acts to partially offset the effect caused by industrial emission. In contrast to North China, SO 2 emissions in South China exhibit a continuous descending tendency, due to the gradual cuts of industrial emissions together with a sudden downward shift of household emissions. As a result, the role of emissions only makes up about one third of the SO 2 variation, primarily owing to the decoupled pathways of emission and atmospheric content during 2009 to 2013 when the emissions continue to decline but atmospheric content witnesses a rebound. Unfavorable meteorological conditions, including deficient precipitation, weaker wind speed and increased static stability, outweigh the effect of decreasing emissions and thus give rise to the rebound of SO 2 during 2009 to 2013.