Based on four periods of Landsat MSS/TM/ETM+/OLI images of 1978,1991,2001,2014,we selected K2 glaciers on the northern slope as the research sample,glacier boundaries from different periods of K2 on the northern slope were extracted by the computer aided classification and visual interpretation methods using remote sensing images,and we analyzed K2 glaciers on the northern slope changes in the period from 1978 to 2014.The results show that the K2 glaciers on the northern slope areas decreased the 53.37 km~2 during the period from 1978 to 2014,accounting for 6.81%of the total glacier areas.Under the background of climate warming,glaciers retreat rate showed the trend from fast to slow in the past 40 years, glacier retreat was very slow in the past 10 years,and the annual retreat rate was only 0.12%.In the study area,the glacier retreat rate on the eastern aspect was much higher than the ones on the western aspect.The glacier retreat rate decreased with the increase of the glacier scale,but decreased with the increase of the altitude. Glacier area change analysis showed that higher temperatures led to the glaciers retreat of the study area,to a certain extent,increasing rainfall inhibited the glaciers retreat;the advance of the 12 typical glaciers in the study area had a greater contribution to glacier areas in accumulation area,making the trend shifting fast shrinkage of the whole glacier to the slow more significant in the study area.