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To reduce air pollution, China adopted rigorous control mechanisms and announced the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP) in 2013. Here, using OMI satellite, the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Application Center (SEDAC), and Fifth ECMWF (ERA5) data at a 0.25° × 0.25° resolution, we explored changes in NO₂, PM, SO₂, and O₃ and climatology over China in response to the Action Plan between 2004 and 2021. This study attempts to investigate the long term trend analysis of air pollution and climatic variations during two scenarios before (2004–2013) and after (2013–2021) APPCAP. We investigated the climatic effects of air pollution in China before and after APPCAP adoption using geographically weighted regression (GWR) and differential models to assess the contribution of air pollution. The spatial representation analysis demonstrated how air pollution affected climatic factors before and after the APPCAP. Several important findings were derived: (1) the APPCAP significantly influenced air pollution reduction in China post-scenario (2013–2021); (2) the Mann Kendall test investigated that all pollutants showed an increasing trend pre-APPCAP, while they showed a decreasing trend, except for O₃, post-APPCAP; (3) for climatic factors, the MK test showed an increasing trend of precipitation and mean minimum air temperature t_min post-APPCAP; (4) innovative trend analysis (ITA) showed a reduction in NO₂, SO₂, and PM, although O₃ showed no trend post-APPCAP; and (5) pre-scenario, NO₂ contributed to an increase in the mean maximum air temperature (t_max) by 0.62 °C, PM contributed to raising t_min by 0.41 °C, while O₃ reduced the t_max(t_min) by 0.15 °C (0.05 °C). PM increased t_max and precipitation with a magnitude 0.38 °C (7.38 mm), and NO₂ contributed to increasing t_min by (0.35 °C), respectively, post-scenario. In particular, post-scenario led to an increase in t_min and precipitation across China. The results and discussion presented in this study can be beneficial for policymakers in China to establish long-term management plans for air pollution and climatological changes.