CTB: less snow, smaller glaciers, thinner ice

1990:

Mountain glaciers are retreating almost everywhere in the world. Ice cores in glaciers show that temperatures between 1937 and 1987 were higher than for any 50 year period for 12,000 years.
"...so far the length reduction of mountain glaciers still remains the most readily detectable, unequivocal proof from cold regions that fast and worldwide secular climatic change is taking place" (Dr Wilfried Haeberli, Swiss Polytechnic, 1990).

1990:

NASA scientists speculate that instability in the fast flowing ice streams on the Antarctic Ross Ice Shelf may indicate instability on the Western Antarctic ice sheet. If all or part of the ice sheet collapsed, sea level rises would be far more catastrophic than that already predicted by the IPCC.

December 1990:

Polar bears are stranded on sub-Arctic Wrangel Island when the sea ice disappears with 2000 kilometres of the island. With none of their usual natural food supply available, the bears are forced to hunt walrus, also stranded.

July 1991:

NASA reports that ice extent in the Arctic Ocean declined by about 2% between 1978 and 1987.

1992:

A major study finds that climate changes in the Arctic will be the most severe anywhere, and suggests that changes in Arctic temperatures would encourage further global warming by inducing the release of more greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, from sub-Arctic tundra soils.

February 1993:

Measurements taken in the Alaskan Arctic show that the tundra has turned from a sink to a source for carbon dioxide.

December 1993:

Severe, unseasonal storms hit Alaska. The US National Weather Service blames a southward displacement of the jet stream (a regional wind pattern) caused by abnormal warming.