Temperature series for 19 caves across the Western Italian Alps

Caves represent challenging systems for monitoring temperature dynamics. While caves are often portrayed as textbook examples of systems with high thermal inertia and minimal annual temperature variability (typically less than 1 °C in their deepest sections) the reality is more complex. Site-specific climatic anomalies, particularly in shallow caves, introduce significant variation. To better understand these localized conditions, long-term temperature records from multiple caves with diverse characteristics within a single region are needed. This paper presents a dataset comprising air temperature records from 19 (mostly shallow) caves in the Piedmont region (Western Italian Alps), collected in 2012 and from 2019 to 2025. Temperature sensors were deployed at two distinct locations in each cave—one at the entrance and one in internal sectors—capturing thermal signals and buffering effects. This yielded a dataset suitable for both climatological modelling and ecological applications. Calculation of data uncertainty was performed through post-calibration corrections. The complete dataset is available in figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29108090.v1). This resource is intended to support empirical testing of thermal models, improve the accuracy of climate studies in subterranean ecosystems, and facilitate comparative analyses across cave types. The development of a high-quality dataset with strong ecological relevance provides abasis for interdisciplinary research at the intersection of climate science, speleology, and subterranean biology. The dataset is particularly suited for investigating ecological thresholds in thermally constrained cave fauna, being interoperable with faunal datasets available from the same area, as well as for evaluating cave microclimates as early indicators of surface climate anomalies.