Abrupt changes in the Earth' s climate system have generated much interest recently. The plaeoclimatic records from the ice cores, the oceans and the land indicated that the Earth' s climate system experienced a series of rapid changes on timescales of centuries to millenium and gave evidence for largeclimate instability against the general background of the last interglacial-glacial cycle. Although significant uncertainties remain about both the cause(s) and the scale of the impact of these abrupt climatic events, there is growing general knowledge of change process in climate during the past 13 000 years based on the studies of some important rapid climatic oscillations, such as a cold and dry event near the middle of the last interglacial, Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, Heinrich events and Younger Dryas event during the last glacial and some cooling events during the Holocene. In this review, we summarize the recent study outcomes and show up the recent progress in the timing, process and mechanisms of the abrupt climatic events since the last interglacial.