To understand the historical and future climate evolution trends in northwest China, the evaluation and projection of climate in northwest China were analyzed spatiotemporally based on CMFD (China meteorological forcing dataset) and the outputs of the CMIP5 global climate models. The results reveal that there was a significant increase in air temperature, precipitation and the near surface air humidity in northwest China during the period of 1979 to 2018, and they are most likely to keep increasing in the future. In addition, the precipitation process was more evenly distributed within the year, and its structure had gone through a significant abrupt change around 2001. Overall, the historical climate evolution in northwest China showed a strong tendency of warming and humidification. In the future scenario, the climate in northwest China will continue to develop towards warming and humidification, and the inhomogeneous distribution of precipitation within the year will keep narrowing down, especially in the RCP8.5 emission scenario. The study can provide a guideline for the assessment of the climate change in northwest China, and it also provides a scientific basis for the decision making of water conservancy, agriculture, meteorology, ecology and other related administration departments.