Evidence lost in transition: Climate-information continuity failures in South Korea’s local adaptation planning and implementation

Across local governments, evidence based adaptation has institutionalized vulnerability and risk assessments in planning, yet structural constraints persist and an additional gap emerges at implementation. Nationally mandated vulnerability and risk assessment tools used in LCCAMs function as a national climate service that delivers standardized climate risk information for local adaptation decision making. This article contributes to climate services and adaptation governance by interpreting the planning implementation gap as a stage specific loss of climate information usability. We introduce a diagnostic framework to trace how centrally produced assessment outputs lose decision relevance as responsibilities shift from planning to implementation. Using qualitative evidence from local adaptation planning and implementation in South Korea, we identify key barriers that interrupt continuity and weaken the traceability of evidence from plans to on the ground action. The findings motivate design principles for climate services that remain usable across stages and administrative handoffs. The study adopts a multi-site qualitative design to heatwave measures under South Korea’s Local Climate Crisis Adaptation Measures in large municipalities. We coded interviews and documents across evidence attributes, stakeholder capacities, and the evidence policy interface. Planning assessments met requirements but were coarse for siting or budgeting, and rotation limited familiarity. Implementation followed legacy programs and indicators. Pilots rarely linked back to plans. This continuity loss is evidence transition failure. The findings show how the usability of nationally delivered climate service tools weakens as responsibilities move from planning to implementation, which helps explain the planning implementation gap in local adaptation.