XBT data collected along the Southern Ocean “chokepoint” between New Zealand and Antarctica, 1994–2024

This study presents the water column temperature data collected during several cruises on board the Italica, Araon and Laura Bassi research vessels, in the framework of the Climatic Long-term Interaction for the Mass balance in Antarctica (CLIMA), Southern Ocean Chokepoints Italian Contribution (SOChIC), and Marine Observatory of the Ross Sea (MORSea) projects, funded by the Italian National Antarctic Research Program (PNRA). Data were collected between New Zealand and the Ross Sea during the austral summers from 1994/1995 to 2023/2024. Across this chokepoint of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, XBT Sippican T7 probes were launched with a regular 20 km sampling, providing temperature profiles with a vertical resolution of 65 cm and a maximum nominal depth of 760 m. All temperature profiles underwent a rigorous quality control, including a general malfunctioning verification, the removal of spikes, the consistency check of adjacent profiles, the comparison to regional oceanographic features and satellite altimetry observations, and a final visual check by operator. Data quality checks led us to discard about 12 % of acquired XBT measurements. This dataset contributes to the improvement of our understanding of Southern Ocean features, being highly valuable for studies focusing on climate variability, especially across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and its fronts. Furthermore, we expect that the collected XBT data will serve as a useful tool for the calibration and validation of recent satellite observations and for the improvement of Southern Ocean oceanographic simulations.