EDMONTON — A freezer malfunction at the University of Alberta has melted some of the world's largest collection of Canadian Arctic ice core samples.

The university says about 12 per cent of the collection was damaged when temperature in the storage freezer soared to 40 C over the weekend. The ice samples were immediately moved to a working freezer on Sunday but the damage was already done.

Andrew Sharman, vice-president of facilities and operations, said the freezer's cooling system malfunctioned and the monitoring system also failed due to a computer glitch.

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Ice from the Canadian Arctic has completely melted, leaving puddles of water in its place and scientists devastated.

O.K., this is what actually happened: Ice cores, millennia-old ice samples extracted by scientists from locations across the Canadian Arctic, melted because of a freezer malfunction in a lab at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The loss of these ice cores could hinder scientific research into how changes in the atmosphere have shaped Earth’s climate history, and how they could affect its future.

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Peterk
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