In order to enrich the measurment methods of aerosol optical depth of the whole atmosphere layer, a detection method integrating micro-pulse lidar and surface visibility data is proposed. In the method, the aerosol vertical extinction coefficient profile is retrieved from lidar data firstly, and the aerosol scale height is calculated accordingly. Then, the relationship between visibility and extinction coefficient is used to obtain the surface horizontal extinction coefficient. Finally, the aerosol scale height is combined with surface extinction coefficient to obtain the aerosol optical depth of the entire atmosphere. This method was applied to Hefei area, China, and the diurnal variation trend of the entire atmospheric aerosol optical depth in this area was succesfully obtained, which verifies the applicability of the method.