The northeastern part of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is situated in the transitional zone of the Qinghai- Tibet Plateau and Loess Plateau. Known as Qinghai's Hehuang areas, it is the valleys of Yellow River and Huangshui River. And it is the birthplace of civilization and cradle of economic and social development of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, especially Qinghai province. It is also one of the areas of earliest human activities in the Yellow River Basin. Because it is located in the intersection of China's two high plateaus, its climate and its changes have a certain heterogeneity. The northeastern part of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has some characteristics of the East Asian monsoon climate, which is different from complete plateau continental climate. Therefore, due to complexity of its climate change and significance of its impact on economy and society, the issue of climate change in the region has received wide attention from academic community. Based on analysis of climate change in the northeastern part of Qinghai- Tibet Plateau from 1961 to 2016 and its heterogeneity in climate change over the Qinghai- Tibet Plateau, this paper discusses the causes of climate change from evolution of atmospheric circulation and changes in vegetation cover. The meteorological data such as temperature, precipitation and other meteorological data of 13 meteorological stations in the northeastern Qinghai- Tibet Plateau from 1961 to 2016, the data of atmospheric circulation characteristics such as the South China Sea summer monsoon index and Siberian High Index released by the National Climate Center were analyzed in this paper. And, the heterogeneity between climate change and plateau main body and their possible climate genesis were also analyzed in the past 56 years. The results are shown as follows: (1) Climate warming trend in the northeastern part of Qinghai- Tibet Plateau is very significant in the past 56 years. The climatic tendency rate of annual average temperature is as high as 0.39 ℃/10 a, showing three obvious stepwise increases and it has mutations from cold to warm around 1994 with significant spatial variability. (2) There is no obvious change in annual and seasonal precipitation. Although it has experienced less to more changes around 2002, there is no significant mutation. The annual precipitation has a quasi-periodic variations of 3 years and 5 years, while the number of annual precipitation days is slightly reduced and precipitation intensity is increasing. (3) The interannual variability of climate change in this region is mainly affected by interannual oscillations of East Asian monsoon, plateau monsoon and South China Sea monsoon and their interactions, while effect of westerly circulation is not obvious. The restoration of vegetation cover has not only responded to precipitation increase since 2002 but also played a certain role of mitigative effect in climate warming trend.