Under human activities and climate change,the renewal ability of water resources in the Yellow River basin has reduced continuously from the 1950s.The hydrologic characteristics in Yellow River basin should be studied fully and clearly in order to implement the sustainable utilization of water resources and ecological security.Taking the observed monthly runoff series and annual runoff series obtained from Lijin station and Huayuankou station as the basic data,the wavelet analysis (WA) method and the self-organized map (SOM) were used to establish a WA-SOM coupling model to comparative analysis of variation characteristics of the lower Yellow River.