How can climate adaptation policy enhance urban climate resilience? Empirical evidence from China

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0335736 November 6, 2025 9 / 21 upgrading, and decarbonization of the energy consumption structure are important bases and paths for cities to undergo organizational changes and adapt to future climate change. We have selected 10 representative indicators to reflect their transformation capacity. The raw data for the indicators are sourced from the China City Statistical Yearbook, the Yearbook of Meteorological Disasters in China, the China National Intellectual Property Administration database, and the National Bureau of Statistics database. The following indicators require special clarification: This paper adopts the measurement method proposed by Li and Wang (2019) for the low-carbon energy consumption structure indicator, which is expressed as the propor- tion of electricity and natural gas consumption in total energy consumption [59]. Following the method of Gan, Zheng, and Yu (2011), the indicator of industrial structure advancement is measured by the ratio of the tertiary industry’s output value to that of the secondary industry [58]. If this ratio is increasing, it indicates that the economy is upgrading towards a service-oriented direction. The indicator of industrial structure rationalization is measured using the inverse of the Theil index, as referenced by Yuan and Zhu (2018) [57], with the specific calculation formula as follows: ISRi,t = 1/ ∑3 m=1 yi,m,t ln(yi,m,t/l i,m,t) (7) In the formula, ISR denotes industrial structure rationalization, y i,m,t denotes the proportion of the added value of industry

m in region i in the gross domestic product during period t, and l i,m,t denotes the proportion of employees in industry m in region i in the total employment during period t. The higher the ISR value, the more rational the industrial structure, and vice versa. We used the entropy method (see S2 File) to measure the urban climate resilience of 57 cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2010 to 2022. The kernel density curve of Resilience was plotted as shown in Fig 1. It can be seen that the kernel density curves are all right-skewed, with peaks between 0 and 0.1. The center of the kernel density curve has shifted sig- nificantly to the right over time, indicating that although the urban climate resilience of most cities in the Yellow River basin remains low, it is showing a positive development trend of continuous improvement over time. Fig 1. Kernel density distribution. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0335736.g001