Display omitted •An optical trap for both transparent and absorbing particles in air.•Fast and effective fluorescence bleaching in single particles.•Observation of the entire evolution from strong fluorescence to clean Raman spectra.•A new method to study dynamic changes of single particles in air. We observe the entire temporal evolution process of fluorescence and Raman spectra of single solid particles optically trapped in air. The spectra initially contain strong fluorescence with weak Raman peaks, then the fluorescence was bleached within seconds, and finally only the clean Raman peaks remain. We construct an optical trap using two counter-propagating hollow beams, which is able to stably trap both absorbing and non-absorbing particles in air, for observing such temporal processes. This technique offers a new method to study dynamic changes in the fluorescence and Raman spectra from a single optically trapped particle in air.