An extremely polluted December day in northern China. Damir Sagolj / Reuters

Javier C. Hernandez reports for The New York Times

BEIJING — Chinese leaders, grappling with some of the world’s worst air pollution, have long assumed the answer to their woes was gradually reducing the level of smog-forming chemicals emitted from power plants, steel factories and cars.

But new research suggests another factor may be hindering China’s efforts to take control of its devastating smog crisis: climate change.

Changing weather patterns linked to rising global temperatures have resulted in a dearth of wind across northern China, according to several recent studies, exacerbating a wave of severe pollution that has been blamed for millions of premature deaths.

Wind usually helps blow away smog, but changes in weather patterns in recent decades have left many of China’s most populous cities poorly ventilated, scientists say.

The findings, some of the first to link climate change to smog, may escalate pressure on Chinese leaders to move more swiftly to shutter steel factories and coal-fired power plants amid rising public anger over smog caused by soot and gases like sulfur dioxide.

The research could also push China to assume an even more forceful role in international efforts to curb climate change by reducing carbon emissions, at a time when the United States, under President Trump, appears to be backing away from the issue.

“Everyone used to think that controlling smog hinged on reducing regional pollution,” said Liao Hong, a professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology and the co-author of a climate change study published this week. “Now it’s clear that it will require a global effort.”

As public outrage has grown in China over dirty skies and a rash of respiratory illnesses linked to smog, Chinese officials have redoubled efforts in recent years to fight air pollution. They have sent teams of police officers to inspect factories, closed hundreds of coal-fired power plants and imposed limits on driving and activities like outdoor barbecuing.

Premier Li Keqiang, speaking at the annual session of China’s legislature this month, vowed to “make our skies blue again” and promised to take further steps to reduce the use of coal.

But even if Chinese officials push forward with ambitious plans to cut emissions, they may struggle to offset the effects of climate change, the findings suggest.

Ms. Liao’s study, which examined data on pollution in Beijing from 2009 to 2016, predicted that weather conditions associated with severe smog would become increasingly common in coming decades. The study did not account for possible reductions in carbon emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Scientists point to the so-called airpocalypse that fell on Beijing in January 2013 as an example of the effects of climate change on smog.

During that episode, Beijing and dozens of other cities in northern China were shrouded in toxic haze for days. Despite emergency measures to cut emissions, the concentration of PM2.5, particles of a size that can penetrate the bloodstream, remained dangerously high.

Researchers now attribute the resilience of smog during that period to unusually stagnant air conditions brought on by climate change. The air was the stillest in three decades during the heavy particulate pollution in 2013, according to a study published this month in the journal Science Advances.

The study found that the melting of ice in the Arctic, combined with increased snowfall in Siberia, contributed to changes in wind patterns across Asia that winter that failed to clear the air over northern China.

Yuhang Wang, an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta who was a co-author of the study, said the results suggested that Chinese officials would have an especially difficult time curbing air pollution in the winter, when weather conditions are most conducive to smog and more coal is burned for heating.