Since the hyperspectral atmospheric infrared sounder (AIRS) has 2 378 channels,it is essential to select the main useful information from all those channels.The paper proposes a method of channel selection based on the cumulative effect coefficient of principal component.Firstly,it was the preprocessing of the channels.Then,for the channels combination during the daytime,the principal component analysis of temperature and humiditys Jacobi was made respectively to get the cumulative effect coefficient of each channel on the principal component.Finally,for the channels combination during the nighttime,the channels affected by sunlight were added in.Thus,the subset of selected channels both during the daytime and nighttime was obtained.It is shown that the method is feasible according to the profile retrieval experiments of temperature and humidity.