This paper deals with one of the needs for PEMFC to be economically reliable: diagnosis tool for water management. This issue is actually a key parameter for both performance and durability improvement. Acoustic emission (AE) technique was employed to survey PEM single cell under various operating conditions. AE events coming from different sources have thus been identified, classified and finally ascribed to different phenomena induced by MEA water uptake and/or biphasic flow in the gas channel thanks to a statistical post-treatment of the acoustic data. Results, although qualitative, seems trusty enough to unravel hidden correlations between AE hits and physicochemical phenomena taking place during the cell operation and open up the way for an innovative and non-invasive online diagnosis tool. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.