Abstract: In this study, the industrial SO₂ emission and soot (dust) emission were selected as two indicators of atmospheric pollution, and the space and time patterns of the decoupling relationship between industrial growth and atmospheric pollution from 2003 to 2014 in Jilin Province were evaluated based on decoupling theory. Then, a new decoupling causality chain was established to analyze the change of decoupling indexes. Finally, the evolutionary characteristic of decoupling indexes was analyzed by adopting R/S method. Conclusions are drawn as follows. During the period from 2003 to 2014, decoupling of the emission of SO₂ and soot (dust) from industrial growth mainly belonged to absolute decoupling, and the proportion of absolute decoupling of industrial soot (dust) was higher than that of industrial SO₂. Based on the changes of decoupling level, we divided the 9 (prefectural) cities in Jilin Province into 4 groups. The spatial evolutions of decoupling state for the two kinds of industrial pollution were different. The decoupling state in the middle of Jilin Province changed more. For soot (dust), the state of expansive negative decoupling graduately expanded toward the east from the middle, and the stress of atmospheric pollution caused by soot (dust) mainly concentrated in cities around Changchun and Songyuan. Decomposition results of decoupling indexes showed that the constraints on decoupling level improvement were different in different cities. Hurst components showed that the decoupling elasticities of industrial SO₂ would decrease and the decoupling elasticities of industrial soot (dust) in different cities showed different variation trends in the meantime.

Key words: industrial atmospheric pollution, decoupling relationship, spatial-temporal evolution, Hurst exponent, Jilin Province