Of many environmental factors, the climate is the most important and active factor influencing plant phenology and its changes. In this paper, we first of all examine the relationship among the plant phenology, the climate and the climate change. Since numerical modeling is an important tool to quantify this relationship, we have further documented the recent research advances at home and abroad in areas of plant phenology and phenology simulation. It is shown that among climate variables, temperature is the most important factor to impact on the plant phenology. When water become a stress factor, its effect on the phenology is also significant. During the recent 50 years, the worldwide plant phenologies tend to have spring phenology advance and autumn phenology delay or slight delay, resulting in the growing season prolong for most plants. As a result of global warming, the temperature rising in winter and spring mainly leads to the spring phenology advance and the growing season prolong thereby. To further understand quantitative relationships between climate forcing and phenology response, we suggest further researches to be conducted in the areas such as, but not limited to, phenology mechanism, phenology relationships with climates and their changes，phenology modeling, and remote sensing applications.