Severe disasters due to extreme precipitation events, often attributing to climate changes, have been increasingly noted worldwide. The relationship between climate change and extreme precipitation has become one of the hottest scientific frontier issues. In this research, we calculated the annual and decadal heavy rainfall amount (HRA) and heavy rainfall days (HRD) on global-continental-regional scale in order to analyze variations in heavy rainfall from 1981 to 2010 at a global scale. It was found that on the global scale, on temporal dimension, HRA and HRD increased in volatility on the whole. Especially from the mid-1990s, annual and decadal HRA and HRD increased significantly. On spatial dimension, the highest global HRA and HRD are mainly distributed in west Central Africa, Madagascar, Southwestern Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Eastern Australia, Eastern United States central South America and some narrow steep mountain regions. Decadal HRA and HRD with numerical growth and regional expansion over the years are mainly concentrated in South America, Eastern United States, South and East Asia while they are in the western region of Africa with numerical reduction and regional reduction. On a continent scale, only Africa and Antarctica interannual and decadal HRA and HRD showed a decreasing trend. On a regional scale, the increasing area of regional HRA and HRD excess reduction area and the maximum increasing area is located in the Amazon basin, the maximum reducing area is located in the eastern region.