Abstract: A special method is proposed for remote sensing of aerosols over land through analyzing satellite-measured radiances reflected from the earth-atmospheric system at two shortwave atmospheric window channels of 0.5 and 0.85 microns. Sensitivity tests reveal that the behavioral features of the differences (D) and ratios (R) between the reflected radiances at these two channels with increasing aerosol optical depth are much different among different types of aerosols. Analyzing how D and R behave with varying aerosol optical depth can help us qualitatively distinguish aerosol types and quantitatively estimate their optical depth. in addition, it is also found that this method is feasible for the most common ground reflectance types.