Abstract <p>Data on the post-industrial recovery of in situ soil respiration in historically polluted areas are extremely scarce. We analyzed soil respiration during the peak growing seasons of 2023 and 2024 in two regions of the Urals. Both regions were previously severely affected by emissions from copper smelters, which were drastically reduced more than a decade ago. The two regions contrasted sharply in weather: the Middle Urals suffered an extreme drought in 2023, whereas the Southern Urals remained climatically normal in both years. In the Middle Urals during the dry year, a soil moisture deficit was observed at background sites, whereas it was absent in the heavily polluted area due to the shielding effect of a thick layer of forest litter. This masked the effect of pollution on soil respiration: the rate in the background zone decreased to 6.1 ± 1.9 g C–CO₂ m^–2 day^–1, which was comparable to that in the impact zone (6.3 ± 2.1 g C–CO₂ m^–2 day^–1). In 2024, a climatically normal year, soil respiration in the background zone (10.6 ± 1.9 g C–CO₂ m^–2 day^–1) exceeded that in the impact zone (7.4 ± 1.7 g C–CO₂ m^–2 day^–1). In the Southern Urals, background rates were consistently higher than in the impact zone, amounting to 9.8 ± 1.8 and 10.0 ± 2.0 g C–CO₂ m^–2 day^–1 in 2023 and 2024, respectively, compared with 4.4 ± 1.4 and 4.0 ± 3.6 g C–CO₂ m^–2 day^–1 in the impact zone. This suggests that the leveling of differences along the pollution gradient may reflect weather variability rather than true ecosystem recovery. To avoid misinterpretation, measurements should be conducted outside periods of extreme weather. A promising approach is to analyze respiration values normalized to a standard soil temperature and moisture.</p>