With the risk of global warming, exploring the changing pattern of extreme climate events in different places is explored for disaster prevention and mitigation. The 0. 5° * 0. 5° grid dataset of daily temperature and precipitation from China Meteorological Administration was used to defined extreme climate events based on the 16 kinds of extreme temperature and precipitation indices. Spatio-temperal variations of the extreme temperature and precipitation events were analyzed through the modified Mann-Kendall trend detecting method across the Pearl River basin, and the significance and consistency of the observed trends were also assessed in a regional perspective. Additionally, whether the observed trends are significantly linked to the large-scale climate fluctuation system was investigated. The results indicate that a trend of more extreme high temperature events and less extreme low temperature events, more short time precipitation events and less long time precipitation events has been found in the Pearl River basin over the past half century, which could, consequently, increase the drought and flood risks. It is worthwhile to note that the trends of extreme temperature events are field significant and regional consistent, while the trends of extreme precipitation events are not. Since no significant covariability has been found between the observed trends and the large-scale climate fluctuation system characterized by the multivariate ENSO index, these trends can not be seen as the inevitable outcome of large-scale climate fluctuation. Instead, that may be attributed to the common effects of natural and anthropogenic climate change.