Based on daily and annual precipitation recorded at twenty-six meteorological stations in Qinghai Province from 1960 to 2009, regression analysis, inverse distance weighted method and Mann-Kendall method were employed to analyze the spatial and temporal variability in extreme precipitation events. The re-suits indicated that extreme precipitation days, annual maximum 1 d precipitation, annual maximum consecu-tive 5 d precipitation, very heavy precipitation days and daily rainfall intensity showed increasing trends in the recent 50 years, and only the extreme precipitation days were significant at the 0.05 level. The spatial change of precipitation extreme events in the study area showed that extreme precipitation days, annual max-imum 1 d precipitation, annual maximum consecutive 5 d precipitation, very heavy precipitation days and dai-ly rainfall intensity in Qilian Mountains had statistically increasing trends while they increased or decreased insignificantly in eastern region. In addition, it was also found that abrupt changes presented in precipitation extreme events at the 0.05 level. At the same time, there were significant correlations between annual total precipitation and different precipitation indices.