Diurnal temperature range (DTR) is an important measure in studies of climate change and variability. The changes of DTR in different regions are affected by many different factors. In this study, the degree of correlation between the DTR and atmospheric precipitable water (PW) over China is explored using newly homogenized surface weather and sounding observations. The results show that PW changes broadly reflect the geographic patterns of DTR long-term trends over most of China during the period 1970–2012, with significant anticorrelations of trend patterns between the DTR and PW, especially over those regions with higher magnitude DTR trends. PW can largely explain about 40% or more (r2 ≥0.40) of the DTR changes, with a d(PW)/d(DTR) slope of ?2% to ?10% K?1 over most of northwestern and southeastern China, despite certain seasonal dependencies. For China as whole, the significant anticorrelations between the DTR and PW anomalies range from ?0.42 to ?0.75, with a d(PW)/d(DTR) slope of ?6% to ?11% K?1. This implies that long-term DTR changes are likely to be associated with opposite PW changes, approximately following the Clausius–Clapeyron equation. Furthermore, the relationship is more significant in the warm season than in the cold season. Thus, it is possible that PW can be considered as one potential factor when exploring long-term DTR changes over China. It should be noted that the present study has a largely statistical focus and that the underlying physical processes should therefore be examined in future work.