Understanding the Earth's climate system andparticularly climate variability presents one ofthe most difficult and urgent challenges in science.The Antarctic plays a crucial role in the globalclimate system, since it is the principal region ofradiative energy deficit and atmospheric cooling. Theregional climate model HIRHAM has been used forinvestigating the climate of Antarctica. Incomparison with the observations, the evaluationshows that the simulations with the HIRHAM modelcapture both the large and regional scale circulationfeatures with generally small bias in the modeledvariables. The decadal scale processes were studiedbased on trend calculations. To better understandthe horizontal structure of mean sea level pressure, temperature and netmass balance trends the influence of the AntarcticOscillation (AAO) on the Antarctic climate wasinvestigated. For detailed investigation of globalteleconnection, two positive and one negative periodsof AAO phase were chosen. The differences in MSLP and2m temperature between positive and negative AAOyears during the winter months partly explain thesurface cooling during the last decades.