Abstract: Short-term climate prediction means forecasting monthly, seasonal, and inter-annual climate trends in the future based on the principles of atmospheric science by using climate dynamics, statistics and other means. Although many researches on the short-term climate prediction have been implemented, the prediction capability is far from meeting the demands of the national economy development. A brief review of the progress in China has been made on the short-term climate prediction in recent 60 years. The physical basis of short-term climate prediction, including the external forcing and internal characteristics of the atmosphere is described. Several new short-term climate objective prediction methods are proposed and their applications to operational prediction are introduced.The ElñNio/La Niña phenomenon and snow cover over the Tibetan Plateau in winter are two important external forcing factors for short-term prediction in China. The large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns, for example, North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), North Pacific Oscillation (NPO), Southern Oscillation (SO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO), are also important physical foundation for short-term climate prediction. Since the 1990s, numerical climate models have made rapid progress, and statistical downscaling method is also an important way to improve the accuracy of short-term climate prediction. In recent years, role of inter-decadal variability in short-term climate prediction are also attracting great attentions.