Biomass burning is an important global emission source of aerosols and trace gases, and has significant impacts on air quality, climate change and human health. Accurate estimation of trace gas and aerosol emissions from biomass burning is fundamental and important to further research about global climate change, regional air quality assessment and forecasting. Within the last 20 years, satellite-based instrumentation has been used to directly investigate the biomass burning emissions and has greatly achieved development. The research progress on estimating emissions from biomass burning based on satellite observations were introduced from four aspects: 1) two methods of emissions estimation for biomass burning using satellite products of burned areas (BA) and fire radiation power (FRP); 2) the method and products for the key variables of BA, FRP and active fire used for estimating emissions; 3) emissions inventory of biomass burning based on above two methods; 4) further work about emissions estimation for biomass burning in the near future.