TRANSMED
Monitoring the surface water in the Mediterranean Sea
with ships of opportunity

The aim of the TRANSMED program is to develop a network of ships of opportunity for the low-cost monitoring of the surface water in the Mediterranean Sea, using fully autonomous systems to measure the basic parameters that are the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and the Sea Surface Salinity (SSS).
Since the Mediterranean has one of the denser maritime traffic in the world, the potential network of ships of opportunity could allow a (quasi)synoptic view at basin scale, transecting the central zones and the southern/eastern parts of the Mediterranean, where data are scarce . It would also provide a synoptic insight in the wintertime convection, when dense waters are formed. Ultimately, the time series of repeated transects can be used to study the long-term variability of SST and SSS.