During the first lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic, soot concentrations in the atmosphere over Western and Southern Europe almost halved. This is apparent from the comparison of two measurement campaigns carried out by the German research aircraft HALO in 2017 and 2020. A new study suggests that around 40 percent of the reduction can be attributed to a decrease in anthropogenic emissions. These findings reflect the major impact of human activity on air quality and the significance of soot as an important air pollutant and climate driver in the Anthropocene, write researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, the University of Bremen, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the German Aerospace Center, Leipzig University and Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), in the specialist journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.