The climate opportunities and risks of contrail avoidance

Navigational contrail avoidance presents an opportunity for rapid reduction in aviation-attributable warming. Here, we use the Aviation Climate and Air Quality Impacts model to evaluate the global temperature changes associated with contrail avoidance towards 2050. If no avoidance is adopted, aviation is projected to contribute 0.040 K of CO₂ warming and 0.054 K of contrail warming by 2050. The combined warming from aviation CO₂ and contrails is 19% of the difference between current temperatures and the +2 °C limit above pre-Industrial levels, i.e. 19% of our remaining temperature budget. An avoidance strategy phased in over 2035-2045 may recover 9% of this budget, but a 10-year delay may reduce this to 2%. The warming due to additional CO₂ emitted during avoidance is two orders of magnitude lower than the expected contrail warming reduction. For every year of delay, the world will be on average 0.003 K hotter in 2050. The most significant climate risk associated with contrail avoidance is therefore inaction.