Holocene climate variability in the high latitude Southern Ocean is little studied due to the lack of high resolution records.Centennial-scale climate variability has been revealed by diatom based high resolution records from the central Scotia Sea.Our study shows that, other than the northern Scotia Sea which displays similar climate development to the open Southern Ocean, the central and southern Scotia Sea remained stable during the Holocene with frequently visited winter sea ice, even at the early Holocene Southern Ocean climate optimum.This may be attributed to the melting of Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet which induced persistent cold conditions in the south, and the upwelling of cold subsurface water.The Scotia Sea reservoir age lowered during the early Holocene and increased during the mid-late Holocene, which is related to the South Atlantic deep/surface water ventilation.Our results highlight the constraint of 14C chronology using constant reservoir in the southern high latitude ocean.