Climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability studies tend to confine their attention to impacts and responses within the same geographical region. However, this approach ignores cross-border climate change impacts that occur remotely from the location of their initial impact and that may severely disrupt societies and livelihoods. We propose a conceptual framework and accompanying nomenclature for describing and analysing such cross-border impacts. The conceptual framework distinguishes an initial impact that is caused by a climate trigger within a specific region. Downstream consequences of that impact propagate through an impact transmission system while adaptation responses to deal with the impact propagate through a response transmission system. A key to understanding cross-border impacts and responses is a recognition of different types of climate triggers, categories of cross-border impacts, the scales and dynamics of impact transmission, the targets and dynamics of responses and the socio-economic and environmental context that also encompasses factors and processes unrelated to climate change. These insights can then provide a basis for identifying relevant causal relationships. We apply the framework to the floods that affected industrial production in Thailand in 2011, and to projected Arctic sea ice decline, and demonstrate that the framework can usefully capture the complex system dynamics of cross-border climate impacts. It also provides a useful mechanism to identify and understand adaptation strategies and their potential consequences in the wider context of resilience planning. The cross-border dimensions of climate impacts could become increasingly important as climate changes intensify. We conclude that our framework will allow for these to be properly accounted for, help to identify new areas of empirical and model-based research and thereby support climate risk management.

气候变化影响、适应和脆弱性研究往往将注意力集中在同一地理区域内的影响和反应上。然而，这种方法忽略了跨境气候变化影响，这些影响发生在远离最初影响地点的地方，可能会严重破坏社会和生计。我们提出了一个概念框架和伴随的术语来描述和分析这种跨境影响。概念框架区分了由特定区域内的气候触发因素造成的初始影响。该影响的下游后果通过影响传输系统传播，而处理影响的适应响应通过响应传输系统传播。了解跨境影响和应对的关键秒是对不同类型的气候触发因素、跨界影响的类别、影响传播的规模和动态、响应的目标和动态以及社会经济和环境背景的认识，其中也包括与气候变化无关的因素和过程。然后，这些见解可以为识别相关因果关系提供基础。我们将该框架应用于 2011 年影响泰国工业生产的洪水，以及预计的北极海冰减少，并证明该框架可以有效地捕捉跨境气候影响的复杂系统动态。它还提供了一种有用的机制，可以在更广泛的复原力规划背景下识别和理解适应策略及其潜在后果。随着气候变化的加剧，气候影响的跨境维度可能变得越来越重要。我们得出的结论是，我们的框架将允许适当考虑这些问题，帮助确定经验和基于模型的研究的新领域，从而支持气候风险管理。