Freezer glitch melts Arctic ice samples

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.

“The loss of any ice core sample is deeply concerning to the University of Alberta and to our research teams, who plan to use this ice to answer important questions about climate change and our planet’s history,” he said in a statement.

“With the assistance of our service provider, the affected freezer has been restored, an investigation is ongoing, and we are working to ensure this does not happen again.”

The ice core samples — little cylinders taken from drilling down metres below the surface in the circumpolar regions — were painstakingly transported in January from the Geological Survey of Canada’s Ice Core Research Laboratory in Ottawa.

They represent more than 80,000 years of climate change and some of the samples date back to the last ice age.