The causes of haze formation in Beijing, China were analyzed based on a comprehensive measurement, including PBL (planetary boundary layer), aerosol composition and concentrations, and several important meteorological parameters such as visibility, RH (relative humidity), and wind speed/direction. The measurement was conducted in an urban location from Nov. 16, 2012 to Jan. 15, 2013. During the period, the visibility varied from >20km to less than a kilometer, with a minimum visibility of 667m, causing 16 haze occurrences. During the haze occurrences, the wind speeds were less than 1m/s, and the concentrations of PM 2.5 (particle matter with radius less than 2.5μm) were often exceeded 200μg/m 3 . The correlation between PM 2.5 concentration and visibility under different RH values shows that visibility was exponentially decreased with the increase of PM 2.5 concentrations when RH was less than 80%. However, when RH was higher than 80%, the relationship was no longer to follow the exponentially decreasing trend, and the visibility maintained in very low values, even with low PM 2.5 concentrations. Under this condition, the hygroscopic growth of particles played important roles, and a large amount of water vapor acted as particle matter (PM) for the reduction of visibility. The variations of meteorological parameters (RH, PBL heights, and WS (wind speed)), chemical species in gas-phase (CO, O 3 , SO 2 , and NOx), and gas-phase to particle-phase conversions under different visibility ranges were analyzed. The results show that from high visibility (>20km) to low visibility (<2km), the averaged PBL decreased from 1.24km to 0.53km; wind speeds reduced from 1m/s to 0.5m/s; and CO increased from 0.5ppmv to 4.0ppmv, suggesting that weaker transport/diffusion caused the haze occurrences. This study also found that the formation of SPM (secondary particle matter) was accelerated in the haze events. The conversions between SO 2 and SO 4 as well as NOx to NO 3 − increased, especially under high humidity conditions. When the averaged RH was 70%, the conversions between SO 2 and SO 4 accounted for about 20% concentration of PM 2.5 , indicating that formation of secondary particle matter had important contribution for the haze occurrences in Beijing.