Hydrological data have been collected during 7 oceanographic cruises, named medgoos, organized in the Sardinia Sea and in the Sardinia Channel between May 2000 and January 2004 (table 1) by the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). Tab.1

The 61,30 meters long R/V Urania of CNR was used during all cruises. Data of conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO) and Chlorophyll-a fluorescence (Chl-a) were acquired by a SBE911 plus CTD probe (Sea-Bird Inc.) equipped with a 24 Niskin bottle rosette for water column samples collection. The CTD data were quality checked and processed by Seasoft software. Then salinity was checked against the on-board analyses of water samples by a Guildline-Autosal salinometer. The same for DO data checked against Winkler titration analyses. Chl-a data were not calibrated, so they are reported as Relative Fluorescence Units. During cruises from medgoos4 to medgoos7 acquired temperature data were checked at defined depths against inverted thermometers installed in correspondence of the Niskin bottles number 1, 3, 5, 7 of the rosette sampler. Pre-cruise and post-cruise calibrations of the sensors were performed at the SACLANT Center (now NATO-CMRE) of La Spezia (Italy). Redundant sensors were often used for both temperature and salinity measurements, apart during the medgoos1 and medgoos2 cruises. The vessel was positioned using an integrated navigation system consisting of two DGPS antennas managed by Andrews Hydrographics software installed on HP 386, 33 MHz PCs. The data set is provided per cruise as ODV Spreadsheet files in TXT format: - Cruise name - Station number - Type of acquisition (here C) - Date in mon/day/yr and Time in hh:mm - Coordinates in Longitude [degrees_east] and Latitude [degrees_north] - Bot. Depth [m] - Ship name - Pressure, Digiquartz [db] - Conductivity [mS/cm] - Fluorescence, Seatech - Temperature [deg C]; IPTS-68 in medgoos1; ITS-68 in medgoos2, 6; ITS-90 in medgoos3, 4, 5, 7 - Oxygen, Beckman/YSI , WS = 3 [ml/l] - Depth [salt water, m] - Practical Salinity from Conductivity [PSS-78]