The planet is heating up more quickly than ever before. For decades, greenhouse gas emissions...
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Carbon Brief
Guest post: How a record-high ‘energy imbalance’ is driving global warming
Abatify Summary
Nature & Climate Perspective
**Accelerating global energy imbalance is rapidly destabilizing marine and terrestrial carbon sinks, directly threatening the long-term viability of nature-based sequestration projects. **
- Over 90% of the Earth's excess heat accumulates in the oceans, causing marine heatwaves that threaten Blue Carbon ecosystems and their long-term carbon storage capacity.
- The escalating energy imbalance accelerates cryosphere collapse and LULUCF degradation, increasing the risk of feedback loops that release legacy biogenic carbon back into the atmosphere.
- Thermal stress alters terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, diminishing the net carbon uptake of forests and rendering traditional nature-based offsets highly vulnerable to permanence failures.
Market & Policy Outlook
**The widening Earth energy imbalance exposes severe systemic risks in voluntary carbon markets, necessitating stricter ICVCM Core Carbon Principles regarding permanence and risk buffer pools. **
- Rising global temperatures increase the physical risk of reversal for forestry projects, directly challenging the ICVCM CCPs on permanence and forcing a re-evaluation of buffer pool allocations.
- Unprecedented warming rates will compel the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and Article 6.4 mechanisms to prioritize high-durability technical removals over vulnerable biological sinks to guarantee Scope 3 compliance.
- As physical climate risks materialize, sovereign states negotiating ITMOs under Article 6.2 will face heightened pressure to discount nature-based credits to adjust for warming-induced degradation.
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