As the third pole of the world， the Tibet Plateau （TP） is one of the natural landforms， which has the most significant impact on global weather and climate. The thermal effect of the huge land surface deep into the middle of the troposphere directly affects the atmosphere， which not only forms the climate pattern in Asia， but also leads to climate change in the northern hemisphere and even the world. In the northern part of the TP， there is the largest desert group in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Compared with other underlying surfaces including the TP， the desert has the characteristics of large surface albedo， low soil heat capacity， and low water content， which is an important source of sensible heat in the earth system and even plays significant roles in global and regional energy balance and climate changes. TP and its northern vast desert area—The two important terrestrial systems constitute a unique symbiotic geographical unit in the world， where land-atmosphere coupling must be related to each other through a certain process. Drought is a common and extremely serious natural disaster in the world. China is one of the countries where droughts occur most frequently. Under the background of climate change， droughts also tend to occur more frequently and worsen， especially in the north China. The causes of drought are complex， and they have always been a difficult and hot spot for research in related fields both at home and abroad. Starting from the land-atmosphere coupling process of the plateau-desert symbiosis geographic unit， what mechanism is used for the formation and evolution of drought in northern China is a frontier topic worth exploring. This article summarizes the latest advances in atmospheric scientific research on TP and the research on arid and semi-arid land surface processes including desert areas in recent years，from which we condense the key scientific issues in the research on the impact of the land-atmosphere coupling process between TP and the northern desert on drought in China for the purpose of reference and helping scientific and technological workers to carry out related exploration.

Drought disaster is an important natural factor to restrict the socioeconomic development, agricultural production and ecological civilization construction in Northwest China.With the global warming, the frequency and intensity of extreme drought events show a significantly increasing trend and the impact of drought increases continually. The results of “the research on monitoring and early warning and mitigation technology of meteorological drought disaster” have been obtained based on the support from dozens of national research projects in the past two decades. These projects have received a series of innovative achievements by long-term theoretical research and applied technology development through the continuous study around the formation mechanism, monitoring and early warning methods of meteorological drought and its impact on agricultural industry, the drought disaster prevention and mitigation technology and other relative scientific issues as well. The major achievements are as follows: New knowledge on the drought formation mechanism and the law of occurrence and development of severe drought events, especially the discovery of four main physical ways of drought circulation modals were obtained in Northwest China. The new drought prediction and monitor indices, and the new equipment of monitoring field evapotranspiration were developed in Northwest China, and these obviously improved drought monitoring accuracy and pertinence. A new meteorological theory of mountain cloud physics was proposed. The exploitation and utilization technology of air cloud water resources were developed over Qilian Mountain, which is the national key ecological function zone with water conservation. The new laws of land surface moisture transport and recycling in arid and semiarid areas, and the physical mechanism of selfsustaining of oasis were revealed. The new characteristics of impact of arid climate change on agro-ecological system were recognized. The response relationship of rain-fed agriculture to drought disaster was set up. The mitigation disaster technologies to cope with climate change in arid area were developed by using coated soil conservation, rainwater harvesting for supplemental irrigation, furrow cultivation, suitable sowing date and so on. These technologies provided a scientific scheme to the implementation of cropping systems, layout and structural adjustment of agriculture and efficient utilization of agricultural climate resources in Northwest China. The above achievements promote the technological level on drought disaster prevention and mitigation, cultivated research teams working on arid meteorological science and raised the service ability of arid meteorology in Northwest China. These results also play an important role in promoting socio-economic development, agricultural modernization and construction of ecological civilization. In addition, the authors covered the main fields which are in urgent need to be studied and possible breakthrough might be made in arid meteorology research in Northwest China in the future.