Runoff and sediment discharge of river is affected by climate change and human activities. Changes of runoff and sediment discharge could be considered as the result of human activities of the paired years with similar weather condition (SWC). Based on the weather data from 1961 to 2010 of stations in and around the source area of the Yellow River upon the Tangnaihai Hydrology Station,the regional precipitation and potential evaporation (ET_0) were generated with spatial interpolation method of inverse distance weighting. The paired years with SWC was selected. The changes of runoff and sediment discharge between selected paired-years were compared, and the reasons of changes were analyzed and discussed using data of land use and NDVI. The result shows that : (1) there are 12 paired-years in last 50 years and they cover all calendar decade in the research period and different precipitation conditions; (2)there are 11 and 9 of paired-years from the 12 selected paired-years showing the reduction of yearly runoff and sediment discharge respectively which imply the runoff and sediment decreasing as a whole ; (3) the impact of human activities varies greatly because the runoff and sediment load change differently within different paired-years. The method could help us to distinguish the contribution of climate change and human activities clearly and the complexity of impact of human being as well.