This study analyzed the spatial-temporal change of historical temperature and precipitation in pastoral transitional zone in Northern China, based on observational temperature and precipitation grid datasets during 1964 - 2013 from Chinese Meteorology Administration (CMA). The climate division was made using rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) in the meantime. The result shows that: (1) The whole pastoral transitional zone in Northern China can be divided into 4 regions which can be simply named the west region, the central region, the southern section of the east region, and the northern section of the east region, respectively. (2) In general, the pastoral transitional zone in Northern China had experienced a significant warming during 1964 - 2013 which was mainly attributed to the warming of winter and larger increase of minimum temperature rather than the increase of maximum temperature. The pastoral transitional zone in Northern China had also experienced a slightly decrease of precipitation (13 mm less during 1964 - 2013), and it was largely because the summer precipitation had declined the most in this period. (3) Focused on sub-regions, the temperature of the central region in pastoral transitional zone increased the most in the period of 1964 - 2013 among 4 sub-regions. As for the precipitation, annual precipitation in western north region decreased in the last 50 years mostly because of the decrease of spring precipitation in local. Meanwhile, the annual precipitation in central region and the southern section of the east region had decreased as well, but differently, it can be mainly attributed to the summer precipitation's decline. Moreover, the annual precipitation increased in the northern section of the east region, and the spring precipitation contributed it the most. (4) The pastoral transitional zone in Northern China has experienced a warming hiatus resembling to the global warming hiatus since late 1990s, only the temperature has declined more, meaning that the declining trend of temperature in pastoral transitional zone is more obvious.