This article presents a systematic framework to identify barriers that may impede the process of adaptation to climate change. The framework targets the process of planned adaptation and focuses on potentially challenging but malleable barriers. Three key sets of components create the architecture for the framework. First, a staged depiction of an idealized, rational approach to adaptation decision-making makes up the process component. Second, a set of interconnected structural elements includes the actors, the larger context in which they function (e.g., governance), and the object on which they act (the system of concern that is exposed to climate change). At each of these stages, we ask ( i ) what could impede the adaptation process and ( ii ) how do the actors, context, and system of concern contribute to the barrier. To facilitate the identification of barriers, we provide a series of diagnostic questions. Third, the framework is completed by a simple matrix to help locate points of intervention to overcome a given barrier. It provides a systematic starting point for answering critical questions about how to support climate change adaptation at all levels of decision-making.

Adapting to the new normal: Successfully responding to the impacts of climate change will be a challenge for many communities, especially cities. Considering the situation in the United States, Shi and Moser examine how stakeholders can help to build urban resilience even in the absence of federal leadership. They discuss how local and state governments, private industry, and civil society can engage to adapt to the extreme weather events and other consequences of changing climate that are expected in the future. Preparing for these looming issues requires coherent, cohesive, and collective responses across all scales and sectors of society. Science , abc8054, this issue p. eabc8054