Abstract: Based on sunshine hours data of 109 meteorological stations from 1961 to 2010 in Shanxi, the authors used the methods of climate tendency rate analysis, M-K mutation detection and spatial interpolation, spatio-temporal variation characteristics of sunshine hours in Shanxi were analyzed. The results showed that: seasonal, annual, and decadal sunshine hours were decreased with an average rate of -64.16 h/10 a; sunshine hours in was summer the most, in winter was the least, seasonal changes in summer declined was maximum, in spring was minimum; monthly sunshine hours was unimodal, the maximum appeared in May; annual and seasonal sunshine hours happened mutation in 1987 from more to less; the annual sunshine hours decreased from north to south, north and middle was more than south; most of the region showed a decreasing trend, the individual area increased, of which, annual sunshine hours in Lucheng had biggest declines with the rate of 207.7 h/10 a.