Keeping Average Global Temperature Rise to Below 2°C Still Achievable, with Potentially Big Cuts Possible from Buildings, Transportation and Avoided Deforestation - But Time Running Out. Action on climate change needs to be scaled-up and accelerated without delay if the world is to have a running chance of keeping a global average temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius this century.

With population growth, urbanisation and economic development, the demand for freshwater in urban areas are increasing throughout Europe. At the same time, climate change and pollution are also affecting the availability of water for city residents. How can Europe's cities continue providing clean freshwater to their residents?

A special 3D microchip, being designed by an EU-funded research project, looks set to drastically cut the electricity and the installation costs of servers in cloud computing data centres, cementing Europe's place as the home of green computing. Cloud data centres – thousands of computer servers in one location - can be the size of football fields and consume the same amount of electricity as 40,000 homes. The data centres are essential because they enable the cloud computing revolution: consumer services like Facebook, Gmail, Spotify and mobile apps, and business services like customer databases.

Forty years ago, in 1972, ‘The Limits to Growth’ appeared –and shocked the world. What has been learned since then and what is to be expected for the next forty years from now – 2052?

Iron, gold, sand, coal, oil, wood, rice – and many more belong to the natural resources, which build the base of the economic well-being of modern consumer societies. Sustainability concepts use the “ecological rucksack” for measuring the use of these resources as an additional indicator besides the water rucksack, the CO2-emissions and the land use. The “ecological rucksack” is the main actor in this story – a global story about resource use, economic growth and its decoupling.

Climate research in Potsdam will get a new home. Adjacent to the historic main buildings of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) dating from the 19th century, a new energy-optimized building will come into existence. The laying of the foundation stone for this exceptional new research building also marks PIK’s 20th anniversary. Representatives of science and politics congratulated the institute, underlining that it has become one of the world’s leading climate research centres.

Their very small displays sometimes make smartphones diffi cult to operate. In the future, a projector will help: if the cell phone is standing on a table, for instance, it can project a large-format display onto the table surface. The user will have the option of operating the smartphone via the projection function or from the display screen itself.

2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, by Jorgen Randers, launched by the Club of Rome on May 7 in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), raises the possibility that humankind might not survive on the planet if it continues on its path of over-consumption and short-termism.

The past decade has been one of unprecedented weather extremes. Scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany argue that the high incidence of extremes is not merely accidental. From the many single events a pattern emerges. At least for extreme rainfall and heat waves the link with human-caused global warming is clear, the scientists show in a new analysis of scientific evidence in the journal Nature Climate Change. Less clear is the link between warming and storms, despite the observed increase in the intensity of hurricanes.

Climate change has impacts on forests, fields, rivers – and thereby on humans that breathe, eat and drink. To assess these impacts more accurately, a comprehensive comparison of computer-based simulations from all over the world will start this week. For the first time, sectors ranging from ecosystems to agriculture to water supplies and health will be scrutinized in a common framework. The models will be provided by more than two dozen research groups from the United States, China, Germany, Austria, Kenya, and the Netherlands, among others.