Optical properties of the atmosphere have important effects on the atmospheric radiation balance and on the functions of various advanced opto-electric instruments working in the atmospheric environments.Optical properties of the atmosphere including sky background radiation and surface reflectance are basic physical quantities for atmospheric radiative transfer, light propagation research, and can also find important application in remote sensing, adaptive optics, free-space optical communication, etc. The atmospheric environments of China are very complicated and popular models like US standard atmosphere can not be applied simply. We suggest to divide the whole territory into several typical regions according to the environment, the surface, the solar irradiance, and the climate condition. Systematic and long-term measurements on the optical properties of the atmosphere should be performed, and application models should be built on the statistical characteristics. Algorithm codes and softwares should be built in consideration of the atmospheric models.