The effect of the turbulence intensity of the oncoming stream on the aerodynamic characteristics of the NACA-0012 airfoil is investigated by a direct numerical simulation. The numerical results are found to be consistent with the experimental measurements. Based on the finite spectral QUICK scheme, the simulation gets the high accuracy results. Both the simulation and the experiment reveal that the airfoil stall does not exist for the low turbulence intensity, however, occurs when the turbulence intensity increases sufficiently. Besides, the turbulence intensity has a significant effect on both the airfoil boundary layer and the separated shear layer.