Snow height was measured by the Snow Depth Buoy 2016S38, an autonomous platform, drifting on Antarctic sea ice, during POLARSTERN cruise ANT-XXXI/2 (PS96). The resulting time series describes the evolution of snow depth as a function of place and time between 15 Jan 2016 and 08 May 2017 in sample intervals of 1 hour. The Snow Depth Buoy consists of four independent sonar measurements representing the area (approx. 10 m**2) around the buoy. The buoy was installed on multi year ice. In addition to snow depth, geographic position (GPS), barometric pressure, air temperature, and an internal ice temperature were measured. Negative values of snow depth occur if surface ablation continues into the sea ice. Thus, these measurements describe the position of the sea ice surface relative to the original snow-ice interface. Differences between single sensors indicate small-scale variability of the snow pack around the buoy. The data set has been processed, including the removal of obvious inconsistencies (missing values). Records without any snow depth may still be used for sea ice drift analyses.