A single hurricane barreling into New England forests can undo decades of carbon storage, a new study has found. As worsening storms with higher-speed winds are reaching ever deeper into the region’s woodlands, according to findings published on Wednesday in Global Change Biology. Now, just one big storm can knock down as many as 10 percent of standing trees in the heavily forested region. Small increases in wind speed led to exponential increases in damage, the researchers found. An 8%  increase drove up the number of high-destruction areas by more than 10 times; a 16% increase by more than 25 times. The findings spell trouble for forest carbon markets, which aim to sell “credits” generated by storing carbon from the atmosphere in the growing bodies of trees. ..There is a lot of controversy over whether carbon offsets truly reduce emissions. But any version of carbon offset schemes… requires the trees to keep standing.