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Abstract Understanding air pollution in East Asia is of great importance given its high population density and serious air pollution problems during winter. Here, we show that the day-to-day variability of East Asia air pollution, during the recent 21-year winters, is remotely influenced by the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO), a dominant mode of subseasonal variability in the tropics. In particular, the concentration of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter less than 10 micron (PM₁₀) becomes significantly high when the tropical convections are suppressed over the Indian Ocean (MJO phase 5–6), and becomes significantly low when those convections are enhanced (MJO phase 1–2). The station-averaged PM₁₀difference between these two MJO phases reaches up to 15% of daily PM₁₀variability, indicating that MJO is partly responsible for wintertime PM₁₀variability in East Asia. This finding helps to better understanding the wintertime PM₁₀variability in East Asia and monitoring high PM₁₀days.