Data from the Along Track Scanning Radiometer 2 (ATSR-2) on board the European ERS-2 satellite have been used to derive the spatial distribution of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over Europe for August 1997. The AOD was retrieved in cloud-free areas using the dual view algorithm. The results agree with co-located ground based sun-photometer data within 0.1. The AOD from ATSR-2 with a resolution of 1¿1 km2 were averaged on a grid of 0.1¿¿0.1¿, to produce daily maps of the spatial aerosol distribution over Europe. A composite map of AOD over Europe was constructed by averaging all daily maps for August 1997. This composite map shows large spatial AOD gradients with variations of a factor of 3 over a few hundreds of kilometers. The AOD at 0.555 &mgr;m for relatively clean areas is around 0.1 while in strong industrialized areas the AOD can be 0.5 or higher. ¿ 2000 American Geophysical Union