Abstract Climate change and its secondary disasters have become one of the most important factors threatening the safety of cultural heritage. After sorting out the history and current situation of coping with climate change in the field of international and domestic cultural heritage, it is pointed out that the theory and technology of conservation planning for historic cities under the condition of climate change need to break through some major and fundamental problems, to re-cognize and redefine the "environment" of historic cities on the basis of the conventional visual, economic, social, historical and cultural environments, and to Improve the conservation planning methods of historic cities, and enhance the climate resilience of historic cities with "natural solutions". It consists of four parts: the first part summarizes the international and domestic discussions on the climate change thesis in the field of cultural heritage, and especially analyzes the situation of coping with climate change in the field of historic city conservation in China; the second part tries to put forward the three levels of historic city environment, i.e., the natural base environment, the human ecological environment and the historic landscape environment. As a whole, the three levels of historic city environment can help us establish a comprehensive view of the environment, and incorporate the factors that need to be considered for sustainable development, such as climate change and ecological service functions, into the conservation planning and scientific research of historic cities; the third part takes Dunhuang as an example to analyze the identification of key environmental factors at different levels and how to enhance the climate of the historic city through the "natural solu " to enhance the climate resilience of the historic city. The fourth part, as a conclusion, advocates the development of conservation planning techniques for historic cities to recognize not only the laws of cultural heritage conservation but also the laws of ecosystems.