Antarctic marginal seas are susceptible to significant decadal variability as revealed by the analysis of a 200-year integration of a regional ice-ocean model forced with the atmospheric output of the IPCC climate model ECHAM5MPIOM. The strongest signal occurs on the southern and western Weddell Sea continental shelf where changes in bottom salinity are initiated by a variable sea ice cover and modification of surface waters near the Greenwich meridian. Related zonal shifts of the western rim current guide deep waters with different temperature out of the Weddell Sea. With a deep boundary current the temperature signal propagates westward through southern Drake Passage and along the upper continental rise in the southeast Pacific thereby influencing the hydrographic conditions on the continental shelf of Bellingshausen, Amundsen, and Ross Seas. Copyright 2009 by die American Geophysical Union.