Artio has released new analysis showing that extreme climate conditions already define wildfire risk for forest carbon projects.
The study coincides with COP30 in Belém, where forests and nature-based solutions will take centre stage.
The research compared wildfire forecasts against major fire seasons in Brazil, Australia and the United States. Across all regions, only severe warming scenarios accurately predicted the scale and spread of burning.
Moderate climate assumptions missed around half of the land that ultimately burned. This confirms that historical norms no longer reflect real-world fire risk.
The Pantanal case study showed that one-month-ahead forecasts under a severe scenario correctly identified 72% of the area that later burned. Accuracy increased as drought intensified.
In Australia, a one-year-ahead severe scenario forecast captured 74% of the eventual burned area in the Gospers Mountain fire. Short-term forecasts performed poorly, showing the fires were driven by long-term drought rather than seasonal weather.
In the United States, the extreme warming scenario outperformed comparable academic models, suggesting that US megafires align more closely with future climate projections than historical records.
Artio says the findings should reshape how carbon projects are designed. Short-term forecasts remain valuable but cannot capture the long-duration drought cycles that drive the largest fires.
Bilal Hussain, Co-Founder and CEO at Artio, said: “COP30 will place forests and nature-based climate solutions at the centre of global climate plans. However, for those solutions to endure, they need to be designed for the climate we are moving into, not the one we are leaving behind.”
Artio argues that severe warming scenarios must now be the default planning basis to ensure project durability and carbon credit integrity.
Severe climate scenarios must become the baseline for forest carbon planning appeared first on Energy Live News.