The geostationary satellite, MTSAT (Multi-functional Transport Satellite), can observe not only cover a quarter of the Earth ’s s urface but also provide half-hourly observations in visible, short wave infrared and thermal infrared spectral bands. It can provide the situation of atmospheric environment in near real-time if the aerosol properties can be timely retrieved. This allows us to monitor the transport of pollutants over East Asia where both natural and anthropogenic aerosols exist all year. For this purpose, a new algorithm is developed for retrieving aerosol optical depth (AOD) with the observations of MTSAT visible channel (0.55-0.90 μm)in this study. The main concept of this approach is long method, that is, the AOD can be derived from two sequential MTSAT observations of apparent albedo by assuming the situation of both surface and atmosphere did not change during one or two hours. The preliminary results show the good agreement with MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrograph) AOD products over ocean areas. However, due to the complex reflectivity, the AOD retrievals over land are not good enough when compared to the AOD measured from AERONET (Aerosol Robotic NETwork). Therefore, to map the surface albedo accurately for AOD retrieving from MTSAT data will be the next step of this study.