Understanding of past climatic change over the Tibetan Plateau is still limited because of the shortness of available meteorological records. However, high-resolution climate proxy records from the Tibetan plateau are scarce and of limited spatial representativeness. In this study we developed a maximum latewood density (MXD) chronology of Abies faxoniana from a sampling site (34°26'N, 102°43'E, site code ZC) of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau and used it to reconstruct the history of temperature variation for the region. Twenty-three trees were sampled. Two 10mm cores were taken from each tree with increment borers at breast height. In the correlation analysis, the local climate data (Maqu, 34°00'N, 102°05'E; 1967~2008) along with the MXD chronology was examined from the previous July to the current September. Response analysis shows that warm season (May-August) temperature is the main factor limiting the MXD variability of fir trees in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. Based on growth-climate analyses, we reconstructed mean May-August maximum temperature during the past 284 years for the study area. The reconstruction explained 40. 4% of the instrumental temperature variance during the period 1967 ~2008 (F = 27.09, R~2_(adj) = 38.9%). In the past 284 years, there were five cold periods (1725~1746, 1769~1819,1834~1845,1857~1869 and 1965~ 1988) and five warm periods (1747~1758, 1820 ~1833, 1846~1856, 1870~1964 and 1989 ~2008). The values beyond the standard deviation (1 SD) indicate warm and cold years. The warm years accounted for 28.0% (38 warm years and 42 cold years) of the years during the whole reconstruction. There is a reasonable agreement with cold and warm periods previously estimated from tree-ring records from Changdu in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. Correlations of the first principal component (PC1) of the two temperature sequences with May-August gridded temperature data (Climatic Research Unit, CRU) were calculated to investigate if it was capable of representing regional large-scale temperature variability during 1950 ~2000. Based on the results of principal component analyses and spatial correlation analysis, warm season temperature (May-August) is the most important forces on the MXD variability of the eastern Tibetan Plateau. We thus consider that the PCI was representative of a large area temperature history of eastern Tibetan Plateau. Seven cold periods (1725 ~ 1744, 1754~1771, 1808 ~ 1819,1833~1842, 1853 ~1867,1898 ~1906 and 1955~1980) were found in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. The PC1 was used to investigate the influence of sea surface temperature (SST) on the regional temperature variability in the common period 1854~2000. The significant positive correlations with SST were observed for the western Pacific Ocean and the northern Indian Ocean. This result indicated that the higher SST of the above ocean domains, possibly the higher temperature of eastern Tibetan Plateau. Moreover, the linkages to the eastern Pacific Oceans suggest the possible close connection of the temperature of eastern Tibetan Plateau to ENSO. Preliminary analysis of links between large-scale climatic variation and the temperature series shows that there is a relationship between extremes in the temperature of eastern Tibetan Plateau and anomalous atmospheric circulation (Indian summer monsoon) in the region. This record helps broaden the climatic information resource to the Tibetan Plateau where heretofore there was little long-term climate data.