Abstract: Remote sensing is an earth observation technology which rose in the 1960s, and has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent 20 years with the rapid development of computer and semiconductor laser. It is widely used in natural disaster research because of its generality, macroscopic property and intuition. Based on the SCIE and SSCI database, the authors analyzed the development characteristics and status of international remote sensing application in the natural disaster research. The results showed that the international remote sensing technology first applied in the field of natural disaster in 1974, and presented a steady growth trend, the publishing of research papers was accelerated significantly since 1999, and the research results were widely used in the field of natural disasters. The remote sensing technology is mainly applied in the fields of landslides, drought, climate change, earthquakes and other natural disasters, and the data processing method in remote sensing technology was the hotspot and difficult point in the application of remote sensing technology in natural disaster research. USA, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan had greater advantages in this field, China and India had great advantages in literature quantity, but still needed substantial improvement in the research quality and academic influence.