Changes in climate have had a significant impact on crop growth and development across China. However, the responses in crop phenology and growing duration to climate change were regionally diverse, especially in northern China where spring wheat is planted as the staple crop. This study explored the time trends and characteristics of the changes in climate variables as well as the phenology and growing duration of spring wheat. The correlations between these variables have also been examined to find the reasons for the regional diversity of spring wheat growth and development in response to climate change, based on the spring wheat phenology data set and meteorology derived from 18 agricultural meteorological observation stations and the use of correlation analysis methods. The results show that the annual average air temperatures during February to August, which represent the thermal resource availability for the spring wheat growing season, have a significant warming trend since 1980, with the largest increase in temperature measured as 0.78 ℃/decade. However, the initial dates of more than zero Celsius degree have not become significantly earlier. In response to these characteristics of changes in climate, the planting and seedling dates have not become significantly earlier, showing some significant and slight delay in some stations and slight advancement in others. The annual average temperatures and growing degree days, from planting to maturity and grain filling stages have increased significantly, indicating that regional warming in northern China mainly occurs during the reproductive growth stage rather than in vegetative growth stage. Due to the delay and advancement in planting dates in some stations, the growing duration during the growing period has decreased significantly in 10 stations and slightly decreased in the other stations. However, the results of correlation analyses show that the correlation coefficients between planting dates and growing durations are noticeably higher than that between the maturity dates and growing duration, suggesting a greater influence from changes in planting date on the growing duration when compared to maturity date. There are stronger correlations between growing duration and annual average temperature than between growing duration and growing degree days, indicating that the relationship between the annual average temperature and growing duration can better describe the principal process of spring wheat growth and development than the relationship between growing degree days and growing duration. Along with global warming, the measures implemented for climate adaptation, such as cultivar improvement, adjustment of planting dates and others, as well as the regional differences in performance, have caused the regional diversity in the changes to spring wheat growth and development. The regional diversity of changes in growth and development has been the result of adaptation to climate change over the past decades.