Atmospheric water surface discharge is a promising method for water treatment. The selection of discharge gap distance must take a pair of conflicting aspects into account: the chemical efficiency grows as the discharge gap distance decreases, while the spark breakdown voltage decreases as the gap distance decreases. To raise the spark breakdown voltage and the chemical efficiency of atmospheric pressure water surface discharge, resistive barrier discharge is introduced in this paper. Both the high voltage electrode and the ground electrode are suspended above water surface to form an electrode-water-electrode discharge system. The water layer plays the role of a resistive barrier which inhibits the growth rate of discharge current as voltage increases. Experiments conducted at different discharge gap distances and water conductivities indicate that both the spark breakdown voltage and the chemical efficiency are remarkably raised in comparison with traditional water surface discharge. After parameter optimization, the discharge reactor is scaled up with activated carbon fiber electrodes and advantages of water resistive barrier discharge are kept.