Abstract:The radiosonde, ground station and satellite remote sensing data are used to calculate the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of the water vapor content over the central and western regions of China during June 2007 and July 2008.It shows that there is great spatial difference among the total water vapor content calculated by the radiosonde data. The overall trend is that in the low-latitude area there is more water vapor content than that in the high-latitude; the seasonal evolution over different sounding stations is consistent, that is, water vapor content in the summer is the most, in the winter it is the least, in the spring and fall, they are almost the same. Meanwhile the radiosonde data are also used to build empirical relationship between the surface water vapor pressure and the total water vapor content, which made it possible to estimate water vapor distribution by ground station data. The FY-2C data at channels of infrared split windows and visible light are applied to retrieve water vapor distribution,in order to compare with the result calculated by sounding data, it proved to be credible.