In this paper, a real time method for an in situ measurement of the two-dimensional (2-D) temperature filed of thermal plasmas is developed with the combination of the visible image processing technique and the spectroscopic line-ratio method at two specified wavelengths. After the calibration of the gray scale values of the recorded images with the CCD cameras by the emission intensity received using a spectrometer, the 2-D temperature field of the plasma arc-jet can be obtained conveniently based on the derived gray scale values of the CCD images at two specified wavelengths and the formula similar to that of spectroscopic line-ratio method. The experimental results show that the obtained temperature fields of the plasma arc-jet at different times are qualitatively reasonable and consistent with the modeling result. This newly developed method can be employed to measure the transient temperature fields of the plasmas with fluctuations during discharges effectively.