Characteristics of glacial lake variation were analyzed in the views of temporal and spatial evolution based on four phases of glacier lake inventories of 1970s, 1990, 2000 and 2010 respectively. The glacier lake variations are characterized by a general trend ofweak decrease in the number and marked increase in the areain Chinese Himalayas during the past 40 years. The number of glacier lakes decreased with a rate of 0.3%, and the area of glacier lakes increased with a rate of 53.1%11.5%. The interdecadal differences are obvious, and 2000 is a turning point in the number of glacier lakes(the number of glacier lakes decreased before around the year of 2000, while increased after that), but the area of glacial lakes kept continuous growth in last 40 years. It was found that the growth rate of glacier lakes was much faster at western watersheds than that in the eastern watersheds and decreased with a linear rate of 2.4%/(°) from west to east. In addition, the glacial lake areas are widely expanding at different elevations. Therein, the annual net glacier lakes growth rate of 76.7% watersheds present asingle-peakgrowth model at different elevations with 100 m bandwidth, and the others present double-peakor evenmulti-peakexpanding models, which reflects the complexity of glacier lakes evolution at different elevations and the vertical differentiation of the climatic change. The positive correlation relationship is remarkable between the normalized glacier areas and the normalized glacier lake areas, and it appeared a trend ofnormalized glacier areas decrease and normalized glacial lake areas increasein different watersheds of Chinese Himalayas during the past 40 years.