One of focus of global change research is the impact of climate change on terrestrial ecosystem. It is an approach to research on global change to predict vegetation green-up information showed by NDVI using climate variations, because the relationship between NDVI and climate variations can be used to predict past and future status on earth. In this study, impact of short term seasonal and inter-annual climate change on zonal desert steppe vegetation in northern China were addressed, by using air temperature and precipitation data from 1961 to 2000 and NOAA/AVHRR NDVI data from 1983 to 1999. The results shown, climate change presented increasing temperature and fluctuant precipitation in the past 40 years，in this region. Annual NDVI_max could reflect preferably climate change, and it’s outset moved up in past 17 years. Analysis, integrating NDVI, fractional cover, NPP, regional evapotranspiration, soil water content and climate variables, shown that increasing temperature has aggravated soil drought, and precipitation and soil water content was also essential reason to vegetation growth.