Air pollution expert Dan Westervelt discusses this summer's wildfires and resulting air quality in New York City and beyond.
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Wildfire Smoke Returns: What to Know About This Week’s Air Quality
Abatify Summary
Nature & Climate Perspective
**Increasingly frequent wildfire events fundamentally threaten the permanence of forest-based carbon sinks, undermining the ecological integrity of global LULUCF projects. **
- Wildfire smoke and associated intense heat stress local forest ecosystems, accelerating biodiversity loss and altering crucial microclimates.
- Severe fires rapidly convert critical carbon sinks into active carbon sources, releasing decades of sequestered CO2 and particulate matter back into the atmosphere.
- Degraded soil profiles and recurring burn cycles prevent natural forest regeneration, permanently lowering the regional capacity for natural carbon sequestration.
Market & Policy Outlook
**The recurring threat of wildfire smoke directly challenges the 'permanence' requirements under the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), forcing market re-evaluations of nature-based offsets. **
- Regulators and carbon crediting programs are under pressure to restructure buffer pools and reassess LULUCF risk mitigation strategies under Article 6.4 frameworks.
- The perceived high risk of carbon reversal is driving a price premium for technological removals over traditional forestry offsets, shifting carbon market liquidity.
- Corporations targeting net-zero goals under SBTi guidelines are revising their Scope 3 mitigation strategies, shifting capital away from high-risk nature-based avoidance to permanent engineered carbon removals.
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