The global long-term aerosol optical depth (AOD) dataset has a great significance for the study of global climate change. Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites can provide global observation from 1978 to present. In this paper, we have improved the algorithm for the retrieval of the AOD over land proposed by Xue et al in 2017 [1]. We obtain 0.64μm band surface reflectance by utilizing a linear relationship between the surface reflectance at the wavelength of3.75μm and 0.64μm, which has been verified in the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Considering difference of spectral response between AVHRR's bands and MODIS's bands, we calibrate this empirical relationship by fitting the simulated surface reflectance of the relative AVHRR and MODIS bands. A radiative transfer model for Lambertian surface and the look-up table (LUT) method are applied to NOAA-7, 9,11,14, 18 over China mainland (15° - 60° N, 70° - 140° E) from 1982 to 2011. Comparison of retrieval AVHRR AOD against AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) data shows good consistency with more than 60% points within uncertainty of $\pm$ (0.05+0.25xAOD).