The planetary boundary layer (PBL) is the main region for the exchange of matter, momentum and energy between land and atmosphere. The transport processes in the PBL determine the distribution of temperature, water vapour, wind speed and other physical quantities within the PBL and are very important for the simulation of the physical characteristics of the meteorology. Based on the two non-local closure PBL schemes (YSU, ACM2) and two local closure PBL schemes (MYJ, MYNN) in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, seasonal and daily cycles of meteorological variables over the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region are investigated. It is shown that all the four PBL schemes overestimate 10-m wind speed and 2-m temperature, while underestimate relative humidity. The MYJ scheme produces the largest biases on 10-m wind speed and the smallest biases on humidity, while the ACM2 scheme show WRF-simulated 2-m temperature and 10-m wind speed are closer to surface meteorological observations in summer. The ACM2 scheme performs well with daytime PBL height, the MYNN scheme performs the lowest mean bias of 0.04 km and the ACM2 scheme shows the highest correlation coefficient of 0.59 compared with observational data. It is found that there is a varying degree of sensitivity of the respective PBL in winter and summer and a best-performing PBL scheme should be chosen to predict various meteorological conditions under different seasons over a complicated region like the YRD.