Climate Risk, Artificial Intelligence, and Regional Industrial Chain Resilience

Climate risk increasingly threatens regional industrial chain resilience, while artificial intelligence (AI) offers new tools for mitigating its effects. Using panel data for 167 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2008 to 2023, this study examines the impact of climate risk on regional industrial chain resilience and the moderating role of AI. Climate risk significantly weakens resilience, whereas AI mitigates this adverse effect. Both effects are significant in eastern, northeastern, and coastal regions and in large and industrial cities. AI’s moderating role is more pronounced in cities with lower AI development, while heat and drought cause greater damage. The mechanism analysis shows that climate risk significantly inhibits industrial structure upgrading, total factor productivity, and industrial co-agglomeration. AI can alleviate these negative effects. Climate risk also generates negative cross-regional spillovers, whereas AI produces positive moderating spillovers. Both effects are concentrated within the first three years after a shock. These findings clarify how climate risk propagates through industrial chains and demonstrate AI’s value in risk governance, highlighting the need for timely and context-specific deployment of intelligent technologies.