The frequency of extreme climatic events is increasing under the background of climate change, which leads to a significant impact on production and livelihood. Temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of extreme temperature and precipitation indices had been analyzed using Mann-Kendall test and Kriging interpolation, and the relationships between trend magnitudes of climate extremes and elevations were also discussed based on daily temperature and precipitation data from 33 meteorological stations over the Huaihe River Basin from 1960 to 2014. The results showed that: 1) the cold indices (FD0, ID0, TN10p, TX10p and CSDI) showed significantly decreasing trends; FD0 and TN10p decreased by -4.14 and -1.76 days per decade respectively. The warm indices (TN90p, TX90p, SU25, TR20 and WSDI) exhibited increasing trends; TN90p, TR20 and SU25 increased significantly by 3.01, 1.99 and 3.18 days per decade, respectively. Diurnal temperature range (DTR) showed a significant downward trend because of the minimum temperature increases larger than the maximum temperature. 2) No significant changes for extreme precipitation indices were observed over the past 55 years. PRCPTOT, R10 and R20 showed a slow downward trend, while RX1day, RX5day, as well as the SDII showed a slowly rising trend. 3) From the spatial distribution characteristics of temperature indices, FD0, TN10p, TR20 and TN90p showed significant variations over the most area of the basin; FD0 and TN10p decreased from the center region to the northeastern and southwestern region of the basin; TR20 and TN90p showed the largest increasing rate in the center part of the basin. Considering the extreme precipitation indices, no indices exhibited significant changes over the whole basin. 4) No significant relationships were observed between temperature, precipitation extremes and elevation based on the data captured from current meteorological stations. This indicated that the elevation dependency is deficiency in the Huaihe River Basin, China. 5) The variation trends of extreme temperature and precipitation indices in the Huaihe River Basin are approximately between the Yellow River Valley and the Pearl River, which showed the characteristics of the North- South transition zone. This study is of great significance to the sustainable development of water resources in the Huaihe River Basin, the construction of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project and the disaster prevention and reduction.