Soot: The super-pollutant choking a burning Earth, in photos

Burning fossil fuels and forests releases the well-known greenhouse gases that drive anthropogenic climate change. That burning also produces soot, a fine black particle that harms health and accelerates warming. A new photo series highlights the often overlooked consequence of burning. Award-winning photojournalist Victor Moriyama, in partnership with the Clean Air Fund, traveled across Brazil, from the Amazon Rainforest in the north to rural communities in the southeast, to photograph soot and its human impacts during 2025, following some of the nation’s driest years on record.   Soot, also called black carbon, can stay suspended in the air for weeks or months before settling. When it lands, the particles darken the ground, or ice, increasing the absorption of heat from the sun, intensif