The global sea surface wind speeds are retrieved from the Version 3.01 CALIPSO lidar level 1 profile products and level 2 aerosol optical depth (AOD) products. The corresponding AOD data are used for correction of the two-way atmospheric transmittance, which allows wind speeds retrieval in the presence of significant amount of aerosols. Four months (January, April, July and October, 2007) of the CALIPSO lidar 532 nm data are selected. The AMSR-E sea surface wind speed data are collocated with the CALIPSO data and used for comparison. Effects from whitecaps and subsurface backscattering signals are corrected empirically using the lidar depolarization ratio measurement. The standard deviations of wind speeds retrieved by the CALIPSO lidar single-shot data and those by AMSR-E are 1.24, 1.24, 1.24, 1.20 m/s, respectively, for January, April, July and October, 2007. The standard deviations are reduced to 0.98, 1.02, 0.98, 0.94 m/s, respectively, when the lidar data is smoothed with a 5 km running window. The results show that the method works well and the data utilizing rate increases.