Aiming at the dynamic impact of global climate change on the spatial and temporal evolution of precipitation, the daily precipitation data of 85 meteorological stations in and around the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during 41 a from 1978 to 2018 were selected to analyze the typical distribution types of annual precipitation and regional spatiotemporal evolution of precipitation of the plateau using empirical orthogonal function (EOF), rotating empirical orthogonal function (REOF), Sen’s slope estimation, sliding t-test and Morlet wavelet analysis. The results show that the overall annual precipitation of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau mainly presented two typical distribution types, which are north-south difference and southeast-northwest difference, and there was a dry-wet difference that gradually decreased around the center composed of the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, the lower reaches of the Lancang River and western Sichuan. REOF was then used to divide the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau into eight geographic zones, the precipitation in zone Ⅴ and Ⅵ showed a downward trend, with a decrease of 1.5% and 3.7%, respectively; whereas the precipitation in Zone Ⅰ,Ⅱ,Ⅲ,Ⅶ and Ⅷ showed an upward trend, with an increase of 8.6%, 28.3%, 10%, 3.8%, and 6%, respectively. The precipitation in the northwestern and northern arid regions of the plateau showed an increasing trend, forming five abnormal precipitation areas in the Karakoram Mountains, the Qaidam Basin, the western Sichuan, the southeastern plateau and the Qiangtang Plateau. The annual average precipitation in the eight zones presented multiple abrupt change years, and each zone showed different degrees of interdecadal variation and periodicity on different time scales.