Abstract:The rainfall and temperature data from 122 meteorological stations in Yunnan province are used to analyze the climatologic characteristics of the severe drought in 2009-2010. It is noted that the higher temperature and less precipitation occurred from July 2009 to June 2010, drought emerged in September 2009 and lasted to May 2010 with 200 drought persisting days in many counties (cities), and the number of one-day extraordinary and severe drought county (city) broke the record after 1961. By using the NCEP/NCAR reanarysis data and OLR data, anomalous circulations at the drought-forming(Sep.-Oct.,2009) and drought-developing(March—May, 2010) stages are explored. The results indicate that in the forming stage, anomalous ridges existing over Ural Mountain and Tibetan Plateau was associated with weak cold air, moreover, anomalous easterlies and westerlies at low and upper levels of troposphere covered the tropical Indian Ocean, which weakened the zonal monsoon circulation, convection over the Bay of Bengal and the Indo-China Peninsula, as well as the southwestwarding water vapor transportation to Yunnan. Hence, the water vapor content around Yunnan province was very low and the anomalous subsidence air flow was evident. In March, the geopotential height anomalies were negative in the north while positive in the south over the mid-high latitude in Eurasia, which related to strong zonal wind and northwarding cold air activities. The West Pacific subtropical high combined with North Africa subtropical high, and then formed a broad belt-like high in the low latitude. The geopotantial height in the upstream of the southern-branch trough was higher than the normal and was associated with anomalous subsidence air flow. In addition, there were no prominent eddies in the westerlies and the southern-branch trough was inactive, which caused water vapor divergence over Yunnan province. In May, 2010, the anomalous geopotential height exhibits '-+-' pattern, low level trough and cold air shited northward, and the West Pacific subtropical high extended to Andaman Sea inhibiting the cross-equatorial flow from entering the Bay of Bengal, which lead to late summer monsoon onset in the southern Bay of Bengal and Indo-China Peninsula. Therefore, Yunnan province is dominated by anomalous Northwest water vapor transportation and water vapor divergence.