Lake sediments in arid area can record the change of regional humidity and dust history. Lake Gahai, a saline and hydrologically-closed lake in the south of Delingha, Qinghai Province, has the potential for reconstructing the local environmental change. Although many long-term environment evolution researches have been carried out in this area, short time-scale and high-resolution records from lake sediments are still lacking. Here we present a nearly 400-year record from a short core taken form Lake Gahai. The chronology of the short core was established by ²¹⁰Pb and ¹³⁷Cs analysis. Carbonate content, magnetic susceptibility and grain size were analysed. The variation of carbonate content can be used toindicate the change of local humidity and the coarser fraction (>66.9μm) was mainly transported by winds, reflecting the dust storm events. The environmental change during the past 400 years can be divided into 3 stages.16331750 AD: large fluctuations of proxies indicated an unstable dry and wet climate environment, especially during the 16501720 AD, and this obvious change was related to the solar activity. 17501950 AD: the decrease of carbonate content reflected an increasing local humidity. 19502010 AD: strengthened evaporation led to a low humidity although the regional precipitation increased. After 1974 AD, strong dust storm events were recorded by the coarser grain fraction.