A method is presented for the retrieval of liquid phase cloud microphysical properties; effective radius (&tgr;eff) and total optical depth (&tgr;) using measurements of reflected intensity in visible and near infrared bands produced by satellite radiometry. Previous techniques have been ambiguous for clouds made up of small water droplets i.e., reff≤6&mgr;m. A method exploiting the dual look facility of the Along Track Scanning Radiometer ATSR-2 has been used to remove this problem and determine a unique solution. Explicitly the 0.555&mgr;m and the 1.6 &mgr;m detectors of ATSR-2 are used to retrieve reff(≥2 &mgr;m) and &tgr; (up to the semi-infinite limit). ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995