With the advantages of fine temporal-spatial resolution, lidar has become a powerful tool for atmospheric monitoring. Atmospheric lidars can be classified due to the detection technology as Mie lidar, polarization lidar, Raman lidar, differential absorption lidar(DIAL), high spectral resolution lidar(HSRL), Rayleigh lidar, resonance fluorescence lidar and Doppler lidar. The principle of various lidars for detection of atmospheric aerosol and clouds, water vapor, temperature, wind, trace gases, greenhouse gases and pollution gases is described elaborately. The advantage and disadvantage of each technology is summarized, as well as development history and the trend of the lidar technology for atmosphere monitoring are also explored.