The paper systematically summarized the tendency of climate change and its potential effects on alpine grassland of Tibetan Plateau nearly past 50years.The data showed that the magnitude of temperature increase on the Tibetan plateau was significantly greater than the average level of China even the world.Although the annual total precipitation tended to increase, the spatial and temporal variations were high from Southern to Northern and from Western to Eastern of the plateau.The climate changes significantly affected the alpine grassland of the Tibetan Plateau. The results from observations and simulations indicated that:(1)The climate zones and vegetation zones of Tibet Plateau could move to northward and westward, whereas the variation tendency of different vegetation areas depended on the different scenarios simulated by different models;(2)Rising temperatures advanced green-up and delayed yellow period from observations which prolonged growing seasons, but remote sensing data showed opposite results since the end of 1990s;(3)Species richness decreased and species composition changed;(4)the vegetation coverage and NPP enhanced from simulated scenarios, but opposite results were found from OTC experiments in the region;(5)Although prolong growing season may improve plant production, the risk of natural disasters could also increase for forages and crops;(6)The future climate change may has a little effect on soil carbon source/sink through simulated different scenarios.Based on the review, we found that generally there were inconsistent results about the climate change and its potential effects on alpine grassland so far on the Tibetan plateau.Therefore, it is necessary for us to research how observed temperature increase to affect structures and functions of the alpine system, and how to bring the generated changes into global change models or evaluation systems, in order to accurately evaluate the longterm effects of climate change in the region.