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A massive freezer failure has damaged Arctic ice cores containing tens of thousands of years of climate change information invaluable to researchers.

“For every ice-core facility on the planet, this is their No. 1 nightmare,” University of Alberta glaciologist Martin Sharp said Thursday.

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The Canadian Ice Core Archive includes 1.4 km of ice-core samples, representing more than 10,000 years of climate change.

More than 180 metres of ice was lost after a freezer in Edmonton malfunctioned over the weekend. That amounts to 12.8 per cent of the collection.

Photo by David Bloom Bloom, David / 00072347A

“I’ve had better days, let’s say that,” Sharp said. “It was depressing to see the state of things and realize we thought we had a system that was bulletproof.”

The samples had previously been stored in Ottawa at the Geological Survey of Canada’s research laboratory, before being moved to the University of Alberta in January, where they were held in temporary storage.