A crack on the Antarctic ice shelf grew dramatically in late 2020 into 2021. Scientists are watching to see if the rapidly accelerating crack will cause the shelf to rip apart before Antarctica's sunlit summer season - going on now - comes to an end.

Here are some of the space missions to keep an eye out for in 2021.

A new study has found that pollution from microplastics is widespread in the Arctic Ocean, and 92% of those particles are minuscule synthetic fibers from our clothes.

Megalodons - the extinct giant sharks that lived in most of Earth's oceans about 3 million years ago - gave birth to babies that were larger than adult humans, scientists say.

Forty years of satellite data show that 2020 was just the latest in a decades-long decline of Arctic sea ice.

A study of oppositely charged magnetic field bands, moving in the sun's northern and southern hemispheres, suggests the coming sunspot cycle - Cycle 25 - will be a particularly strong one. This result contradicts an earlier expert forecast, suggesting a weak Cycle 25.

A new strain of the virus that causes Covid-19 appears to be spreading fast in the the UK. Why it matters that the coronavirus is changing, and what it means for vaccine effectiveness.

A severe climate change event on Venus may have transformed an Earth-like climate to the current uninhabitable-to-humans state.

Early ice retreat amid warm Arctic air temperatures set the stage for the slow refreeze in 2020.

November 30 marked the official end of the record-breaking 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, although more storms are still possible. Why did 2020 have so many storms? And what does climate change have to do with it?