Hear UKCEH Micrometeorologist, Dr Jonathan Evans, on BBC Radio 4's Farming Today discuss how the COSMOS-UK cosmic ray neutrons science works to measure soil moisture, soil moisture trends this year and how climate change will impact UK farming in the future.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology is undertaking a deep dive review, on behalf of NERC, into the National Capability funded long-term environmental terrestrial and freshwater monitoring currently undertaken in the UK.
This review will help to identify the priorities required for an adaptable and flexible UK environmental monitoring network for the future.
We welcome anyone who is a researcher, practitioner or user of current terrestrial and freshwater monitoring data to complete the survey by 9am Monday 29 September.
The information from this survey will be synthesised and presented to a panel of experts from the UK environmental community. This independently facilitated session will help to build the criteria and vision for the UK environmental monitoring network in the future.
Following the panel session, a report will be presented to NERC to help inform decision making in the future. Please get involved and make your voice heard. Contact nc-uk@ceh.ac.uk if you have any questions.
Soil moisture levels across the COSMOS-UK network have experienced a partial recovery after a very dry period, but some sites, particularly in the South, remain drier than usual.
Soil moisture levels across most of the COSMOS-UK network remained very dry; however, additional rainfall in some northerly and westerly regions resulted in some sites being better than usual.
Please click here for the full COSMOS-UK Soil Moisture Summary.
UKCEH’s soil moisture summary for April 2025 reports that “April soil moisture levels were exceptionally low compared with the long-term averages across many COSMOS-UK sites, continuing the drying trend from the previous month.” COSMOS-UK is the UK’s national soil moisture monitoring network of 44 sites using cosmic ray neutron sensor technology. In fact, 11 of the COSMOS-UK sites recorded their lowest April soil moisture on record.
This evidence reiterates the concerns raised by both UKCEH and the Environment Agency earlier this week: what will the driest spring in England since 1961, and the driest start to the year for northern regions in nearly a century, mean for farmers, business and households?
We reached out to a COSMOS-UK site host in one of the worst-affected regions, the East of England, for comment on how the current conditions are affecting their farming operations.
Hugh Mason, independent farm owner hosting the Fincham site, in north-west Norfolk, highlighted how quickly the soil dried out following an extremely wet Autumn and Winter: “Readings in the third week of February showed soil moisture to be extremely wet, historically high for Fincham. By the start of April, it was historically dry and then started setting new levels of dryness through to mid- April.”
Figure: 2025 soil moisture at Fincham, compared to historic maximum and minimum levels.
At Fincham, oilseed rape, rye, winter wheat, sugar barley, sugar beet and maize are grown on a 6-year rotation on chalky loam and calcareous mineral soil. The period from April to June is critical for the oilseed rape, wheat and rye crops. At the moment, the exceptionally low rainfall and unusually high temperatures are having a huge impact: “Lack of moisture stops the movement of nutrition from the soil to plant roots and therefore uptake - if you don’t get fed you go hungry”.
There is no irrigation at Fincham which changed its cropping to have less exposed to weather risk at any one moment. However, other farms in the local area have started irrigating unusually early.
Farmers in drier parts of the UK are having to adapt their farming methods and crop choices in response to the changing climate and impact on soil moisture.
On 24th-26th September, some of the COSMOS-UK team attended the 7th International COSMOS Workshop in Hillsborough, Northern Ireland.
The event was a platform for scientists and international experts in the area of soil moisture observation research to come together and share knowledge, experience and expertise.
Part of the event involved a field trip to one of our three COSMOS-UK sites in Northern Ireland (pictured), as well as presentations from our team.
Future increases in soil moisture drought frequency at UK monitoring sites: merging the JULES land model with observations and convection-permitting UK climate projections. Find out more about the paper here. Full paper available at: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad7045.
We are pleased to announce that the latest COSMOS-UK dataset has been released via the Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC). This contains daily and sub-daily hydrometeorological and soil moisture observations from the COSMOS-UK network from 2013 to 2023 - a full 10-year dataset for some of our sites! This latest dataset includes updated COSMOS VWC values based on updates to the gamma correction parameter to account for changes in the solar cycle.