As we face an unprecedented planetary crisis1, we must urgently scale up our capacity to adapt to climate change impacts (Fig. 1). Any attempt to address the climate emergency requires well-coordinated collaboration between the scientific, policy and social domains2. Planning for climate change adaptation, however, often requires information and knowledge granularity that are not always available for the specific local context3. Decision-making processes addressing weather and climate-related disasters need to account for complex urban and rural contexts4. This presents challenges because there is a time lag between policy needs and the urgency of the corresponding response and the generation of robust climate change information and knowledge3. Transdisciplinary research, a type of research guided by overarching conceptual frameworks that transcend disciplinary siloes5 through mutual and joint learning processes6, has been identified as a potential avenue to bridge the temporal and knowledge gaps hindering adaptation because it enables the integration of knowledge from different disciplines and social actors7.