The data publication contains all heat-flow data of onshore Germany. The data release contains data generated between 1959 and 2020 and constitutes a substantial update and extension compared to the last compilation provided by the Geothermal Atlas from Hurter & Haenel (2002). The data set comprises new heat-flow determinations published after 2002 as well as data from before 2002, which were not included in the Hurter & Haenel atlas. The resulting updated database contains 836 determinations of heat flow at 595 locations from 42 publications. 85% of the reported heat-flow values are determined in boreholes, 5% in mines, and further 9 % are from onshore lake measurements using marine probe sensing techniques.

The reporting and storing of the database is following the structure of the IHFC Global Heat Flow Database (Fuchs et al., 2021). A comprehensive description, including field classifications and ex-amples of associated data, is documented there. The IHFC database concept introduces parent elements (providing site-specific information), child elements (i.e. heat-flow values determined at the site and associated meta-data) and further fields providing additional information for the eval-uation of heat-flow quality. Thus, it provides a detailed collection of data and meta-data infor-mation, exceeding the sparse information on coordinates, name and heat-flow value provided in Hurter & Haenel (2002). In our release of the German heat-flow values, we have added fields about the applied quality scoring, the reasoning for inclusion or exclusion of data due to quality, and a descriptive field of the regional tectonic or geological units. For details of this procedure see Fuchs et al. (2022).

The associated data description provides the full list of data sources (publications), while the DOI landing page only displays digital versions of articles if available.