Abstract: The simplified aerosol retrieval algorithm (SARA) gets rid of the dependence of traditional aerosol optical depth (AOD) inversion algorithm on the lookup table, and it can get great inversion effect in both dark surface area and bright surface area.Due to the spatial resolution of AOD obtained from the data of moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) is insufficient, the AOD inversion is carried out with GF-1 wide field of view(WFV)data based on SARA. The retrieved AODs show a high consistency with ground-based AOD measurements, with average correlation coefficient 0.962, root mean square error 0.073, mean absolute error 0.051 and expected error 88.6%. Compared with the MODIS aerosol products in the same period, the inversion results are more consistent in space and have higher spatial coverage, resolution and accuracy. Algorithm suitability study shows that the inversion error caused by the observation geometry and radiometric calibration error of GF-1 WFV camera is small, the absolute error is within 0.04, and the relative error is within 10%.