It is very important to obtain the base parameters of clouds sounding/detecting both qualitatively and quantitatively， so to understand the future weather variation trends. The researches on the methods for sounding clouds， such as the distribution structure of clouds in the recent years, are reviewed. The researches are described according to the characteristics of different observational tools， including space borne remote sensing, ground based remote sensing， and so on， and the analysis and comparison are conducted. The advantages and disadvantages of the methods are discussed， which is meaningful for various scientific researches in future. Some problems that further researches in this field may be confronted in and the probable directions of the future observation research are discussed.