Retrieval of aerosol absorption using satellite remote sensing is an important but difficult problem. Earlier studies have demonstrated that the effect of aerosol absorption is small over surfaces with low reflectance, but is important over surfaces with large surface reflectance. Here, we propose a method to infer the short wave absorption characteristics of aerosols using satellite remote sensing. The proposed method exploits high surface reflectance of continents (especially deserts) and absorbing nature of aerosols. The advent of multi-spectral satellites such as MODIS provides an excellent opportunity to infer the regional distribution of aerosol absorption. The method is validated using ground-based measurements. The overall error in the inferred single scattering albedo is ¿0.02 and ¿0.03 corresponding to surface reflectance of 0.15 and 0.25 respectively.