Temperature and heating-induced temperature difference profiles were measured through the atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean using a SIMBA-type sea ice mass balance buoy equipped with a several meter long thermistor chain. The present dataset was recorded by SIMBA 2016T38 (original name Awi_84) installed on drifting sea ice in the Southern Ocean during the expedition Polarstern PS96 (ANT31/2,FROSN) in 2015/16. Data is available between 2016-01-25 17:25:00 and 2017-01-10 12:26:00. The thermistor chain was Variable 5 m long and included 240 sensors with a regular spacing of 2 cm. The resulting time series includes the evolution of temperature and temperature differences at 30 s and 120 s during a heating cycle of 120 s as a function of location, depth and time. The sampling intervals were usually between hourly and daily, but were most frequently configured to 6 hours for temperature, and 24 hours for temperature differences. In addition to temperatures and geographic location were measured. The present dataset was processed as follows: obvious inconsistencies (missing values) and unrealistic values of GPS position have been removed. This instrument was deployed as part of the project Sea Ice Physics @ AWI (AWI_SeaIce).