The southwest Atlantic Ocean is one of the most important fishing areas in the world， and fishing countries there include coastal states， such as Argentina， and many non-coastal states， such as China and Japan. The four main commercial species with the highest annual average yield are Illex argentinus， Merluccius hubbsi， Sardinella brasiliensis and Micropogonias furnieri. Exploring impacts of climate variability on the fishery ecosystems is conducive to the establishment of an ecosystem-based approach to the protection and rational utilization of the fishery resources. The responses of biological factors（major commercial species）， abiotic factors （environmental conditions）， and nutritional structure （food web） of the ecosystems to climate variability were summarized based on the perspective of fishery resources and ecosystem. In conclusion， it was found that climate change can affect environment and had impacts on fishery resources and nutritional structure of the ecosystem. For providing ecosystem-based management strategies， selecting indicator species to represent ecosystem changes and investigating confounding impacts of human activities and climate changes in the future research would provide more realistic responses of southwest Atlantic ecosystems to climate variability.