The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) on board the ERS-2 is designed to measure trace gas column densities in the Earth's atmosphere. Such retrievals are hindered by the presence of clouds. The most important cloud parameters that are needed to correct trace gas column density retrievals for the disturbing effects of clouds are the (effective) cloud fraction and cloud top pressure. At present, in the operational GOME data processor an effective cloud fraction is derived for each pixel, but cloud top pressure is assumed a priori and is deduced from a climatological database. Here we report an improved cloud retrieval scheme, which simultaneously retrieves the effective cloud fraction and cloud top pressure from GOME data. This algorithm, called Fast Retrieval Scheme for Clouds from the Oxygen A band (FRESCO), makes use of reflectivities as measured by GOME inside and outside the oxygen A band (758--778 nm). For validation, the results of FRESCO are compared to effective cloud fractions and cloud top pressures derived with standard methods from colocated measurements made by the Along Track Scanning Radiometer-2 (ATSR-2). The brightness temperatures of the cloudy pixels as measured by ATSR-2 are related to cloud top pressures using temperature profiles from the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasts model. Generally, the results from FRESCO and ATSR-2 agree reasonably well. For the effective cloud fractions the average difference (based on a comparison of 322 points) is 0.04; the standard deviation is 0.09. For the cloud top pressures, only points with an effective cloud fraction larger than 0.1 have been compared. For these 236 points the average difference in cloud top pressure is 65 hPa, and the standard deviation is 92 hPa. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union