We collected historical documents about climatic disasters in the Tengger Desert,located in northwest China. Statistical categorization,time-series analysis,moving average,and rank of climatic disasters were the main means to analyze these information and data we organized. The changes between wet and dry and spatial-temporal characteristics of climatic disasters in the study area during 1426-1949 AD were researched. This study shows that droughts occurred every 3.52 years,and floods occurred every 5.35 years during the study period on the southern and western edges of the Tengger Desert. Apparent spatial-temporal differences were invited by various landforms, and historic construction of counties and districts. At the time scale,both the droughts (51%) and flood disasters (78.6%) had the highest frequency in Qing dynasty. As for space scale,Shapotou district experienced the most amount of climatic disasters with 110 droughts and 78 floods,respectively. The climate in Qing dynasty or the Republican period was wetter than that in Ming dynasty. This was due to global cooling during Little Ice Age,strong westerly and southward of westerlies,leading increasing precipitation in the study area.