The ancient lake bed, sealed more than a mile under Greenland ice, may be hundreds of thousands or millions of years old, and contain unique fossil and chemical traces of past climates and life.
The formation of Subtropical Storm Theta on November 10 over the northeastern Atlantic Ocean made the 2020 season the most active on the 169-year record.
In the next few decades, scientists expect we'll see an ice-free Arctic Ocean throughout the summer. That prospect got much closer in 2020, due in part to the exceptional summer heatwave that roiled the Russian Arctic.
The last time CO2 concentrations reached today’s level was 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch. Hear from geoscientists who see evolving conditions in the Arctic as an indicator of how climate change could transform the planet.
September 2020 was our planet's hottest September since 1880. With 3 months left, 2020 could rank among the top 3 warmest years on record for the globe.
Satellite imagery has revealed that 2 of the fastest-changing glaciers in Antarctica - Pine Island and Thwaites - are fracturing and weakening faster than ever, a step towards the glaciers' disintegrating and causing sea levels to rise dramatically.
Today, most life on Earth is supported by oxygen. But ancient microbial mats existed for a billion years before oxygen was present in the atmosphere. So what did life use instead?