Global climate change continues to intensify, with frequent extreme climate events and abnormal climate patterns profoundly altering humanity's living environment. As a rapidly urbanising developing nation, China's practices in building resilience against extreme climate hold significant global reference value. This research constructs an Urban Comprehensive Resilience Index and an Extreme Climate Index based on Chinese urban panel data, systematically examining the impact of extreme climate on urban resilience. Findings reveal that both extreme climate and urban resilience exhibit a spatially distinct "eastern high, western low" gradient pattern, with fluctuating temporal trends. Among the four resilience dimensions, social and economic resilience levels have strengthened, while engineering resilience has weakened, and ecological resilience remains largely stable. Extreme climate events exert a significant inhibitory effect on urban resilience, a conclusion upheld after rigorous endogeneity and robustness tests employing instrumental variables, double machine learning, and spatial econometric analysis. Further investigation indicates this suppression primarily manifests as extreme heat and drought weakening urban economic and social resilience. Through an analysis of moderating mechanisms, this paper further reveals that fiscal flexibility, industrial diversity, and technological innovation can effectively mitigate the negative impacts of extreme climate on urban resilience. Furthermore, this inhibitory effect exhibits marked heterogeneity across different levels of urban development, geographical locations and policy interventions; whilst it remained significant throughout the period 2006–2021, the intensity of its effect has generally shown a gradual decline. This research provides empirical evidence on the link between extreme climate and urban resilience, and offers scientific guidance for differentiated enhancement policies.