Near-infrared continuous wave cavity ring-down spectroscopy was applied to mea- sure the OH radicals in dielectric barrier discharge plasmas, which play an important role in combustion systems, atmospheric chemistry and the removal of air pollutants by non-thermal plasmas. The P-branches of OH X2YIi （vI ： 2 ＋-- it 0） bands were used for number density measurements. The OH number density and plasma temperature were determined for different applied voltages, gas pressures and concentrations of both oxygen and water. The temporal evolu- tion of the OH number density was obtained by using the ＂time window＂ method, which was used to extract individual ring-down times at different times in a half period of the sine wave applied voltage in dielectric barrier discharge plasmas.
