The destructive gusts and wind shear caused by downbursts are great threats to human's daily life and the taking off or landing of planes. Doppler radar plays important roles on monitoring and predicting downbursts for its high temporal and spatial resolution. The current status of researches on downburst monitoring with Doppler radar both at home and abroad is summarized and the prospects are discussed. Introduction is also made to the basic concepts and echo features of downbursts, as well as the main algorithms used presently, including the shearsegment method, imageprocessing method, and linear discriminant analysis.