Records of benzene polycarboxylic acids (BPCAs) from lake surface sediments in central and eastern Yakutia. This data was used for the evaluation of fire dynamics (biomass burning, fire intensity). BPCAs were prepared from freeze-dried, homogenized lake sediment samples by nitric acid oxidation and measured in a high-performance liquid chromatograph. They are reported here as the concentration of the complete BPCAs (µM), as relative data, and as concentration of pyrogenic carbon (mgC) per gram of dry sediment, based on the sum of B5CA and B6CA. The surface sediments were obtained during fieldwork in August 2021, jointly organized by the Alfred Wegener Institute and the North-Eastern Federal University of Yakutsk. More information about the data can be found in the corresponding research paper (Glückler et al., in preparation). A comprehensive description of fieldwork in 2021 is available in the corresponding expedition report (Morgenstern et al., 2023).