Divergence between physical and emotional heat resilience in Chinese cities

Abstract Urban areas are experiencing increasingly frequent and severe heatwaves, yet the relationship between physical heat exposure and public emotional response remains unclear. This study leveraged large language models and machine learning to investigate the divergent trajectories of the heat aggregation index (HGI) and emotional aggregation index (EGI) under three shared socioeconomic pathways.The results showed that 87.4% of cities suffered high-intensity emotional shocks, significantly exceeding the 53.5% facing severe physical exposure. This disparity revealed that underdeveloped regions faced significantly prolonged recovery periods, reflecting that physical resilience hinged on urbanization capabilities whereas emotional resilience was driven by the intensity of human-induced warming. The CMIP6 projections indicated that EGI declined about 18.2% faster than HGI over 2025–2050, widening the vulnerability gap by the 2100s. These findings demonstrated that urban resilience cannot be sustained by physical infrastructure alone and underscored the critical need to incorporate psychological adaptation into climate strategies.