Based on the monthly soil moisture of GLDAS Noah 2.0 from 1950 to 2009, the temporal and spatial variation characteristics of soil moisture at each layer of the Tibetan Plateau in summer were analyzed. The results are as follows: (1) In summer, the soil moisture at each layer of the Tibetan Plateau decreased gradually from south to north, and there was an extreme value center at the middle and deep layers in the central of the Tibetan Plateau, respectively. (2) The difference of soil moistures between the surface, shallow, middle and deep layers (except for the deep and middle layers) in summer appeared a vertical distribution of ‘wet upper and dry lower’ in the mid-eastern part of the Plateau, while that showed a vertical distribution of ‘wet lower and dry upper’ in the mid-western part. (3) The first mode of soil moisture at different layers of the Plateau in summer appeared a reverse distribution from southwest to northeast, and the zero line moved to northeast with the increase of soil depth. (4) The annual variation characteristics of soil moisture at different layers of the main part of the Plateau were obvious in summer during 1950-2009. The soil moisture except for the deep layer had significant downward trend as a whole, and it was higher in the early stage and lower in the later stage from 1950 to 2009, while for the deep layer it appeared non-significant increasing trend. Spatially, the decreasing trend of soil moisture at different layers except for deep layer of the Plateau dominated during 1950-2009, while the soil moisture at deep layer of the central part of the Plateau tended to increase. (5) After removing trend, the maximum variation range of annual average soil moisture at each layer except for the deep layer decreased with the increase of soil depth in the central part of the Plateau, while it increased with the increase of soil depth in the central and eastern part of the Plateau.