a two-dimensional self-consistent fluid model was employed to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of discharges in atmospheric pressure argon (ar) dielectric barrier discharge driven by a gaussian voltage. the simulation results show that a discharge with multiple current pulses occurs each half-cycle in the gas gap. a transition from the townsend mode to the glow mode is observed with the increasing applied voltage each half-cycle at a lower driving frequency (7.5 khz). it is also found that the glow mode survives all the discharge phases at a higher driving frequency (12.5 khz and 40 khz). the change in the discharge mode with the driving frequency mainly lies in the fact that a lot of charged particles created in the discharge gap have no enough time to drift and diffuse around, and then these particles are assembled in the discharge space at higher frequency. additionally, the spatial distributions of the electron density indicate that a center-advantage discharge is ignited at the driving frequencies of interest, resulting in the radial non-uniformity of discharge because of the edge effects. however, this overall non-uniformity is weakened with the driving frequency increased to 40 khz, at which concentric ring patterns are observed. these distinct behaviors are mainly attributed to the fact that many charged particles generated are trapped in the gas gap and then accumulated to make the extension along the radial direction due to the charged particles transport and diffusion, and that the effective overlapping of a large number of avalanches induced by the increased “seed” electron density with the driving frequency. meanwhile, the surface charged particles accumulated on the dielectric barriers are also shown to play a role in the formation of the discharge structure. © 2017 author(s).