Abstract The effects of climate change on population viability reflect the net influence of potentially diverse responses of individual‐level demographic processes (growth, survival, regeneration) to multiple components of climate. Articulating climate–demography connections can facilitate forecasts of responses to future climate change as well as back‐casts that may reveal how populations responded to historical climate change. We studied climate–demography relationships in the cactus Cyclindriopuntia imbricata; previous work indicated that our focal population has high abundance but a negative population growth rate, where deaths exceed births, suggesting that it persists under extinction debt. We parameterized a climate‐dependent integral projection model with data from a 14‐year field study, then back‐casted expected population growth rates since 1900 to test the hypothesis that recent climate change has driven this population into extinction debt. We found clear patterns of climate change in our central New Mexico study region but, contrary to our hypothesis, C. imbricata has most likely benefitted from recent climate change and is on track to reach replacement‐level popul
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