During the Polarstern cruise PS144 from August 2024 to October 2024 in the central Arctic Ocean ice core samples were obtained with a 9 cm Kovacs corer during 10 ice stations. In total, there are 12 cores (at two stations the ice was sampled twice), all of them taken within the vicinity of the footprint of the onboard microwave radiometers installed for the VAMPIRE project (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.990496), that is, in about 25 m distance to the port bow of Polarstern. This dataset contains vertical temperature profiles obtained by drilling holes in 5 cm intervals (for the upper 20cm) and 10 cm intervals for the rest and inserting a waterproof thermometer with a needle probe. For most of the samples, the whole ice layer was sampled. The measured total ice thickness ("EsEs") is included in the dataset. In addition, the measured air temperatures at 2 m and at 5 cm above the surface as well as at the surface (either bare ice or snow) and snow-ice interface temperatures are included in the dataset. The snow depth is included, too. Note that the location (latitude and longitude in the dataset) was usually measured at the start of the measurements, while the actual coring occurred up to a few hours later and does not account for sea ice drift. The ice cores are identifiable by the column "unique core number", which is the same as used in the salinity and density profile dataset. For more information about these measurements the user is referred to Chapter 6.4 of the cruise report (https://doi.org/10.57738/BZPM_0794_2025).