hydro-jules.org/data-driven-... Applications open on 02.03.26 for the Data Driven Approaches to Hydrological Science Summer School. A free online course for postgrads, ECRs, consultancies, monitoring agencies, industry profs to advance their understanding of data-driven hydrological science.

February #siteofthemonth is Hadlow, based at Hadlow College, Kent’s only rural college, offering an extensive range of land-based courses at all levels. The field is grazed grassland, part of a 57-hectare farm of grazing, arable crop and forage production.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJAb... COSMOS-UK was on the ITV News on 13 Feb 2026. (43 mins in). Dr Jon Evans describes the science behind the COSMOS-UK network, Jasmine Hughes talks about the high water levels in aquifers and a COSMOS-UK site owner explains the devastating effect of rainfall extremes.

cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul... The January 2026 soil moisture summary is now available. Higher-than-average rainfall in many regions has led to a soil moisture recovery across the COSMOS-UK network after a drier end to December.

audioboom.com/posts/885879... COSMOS-UK features in the latest episode of the UKCEH podcast, 'Counting the Earth' - go to 1 min 18 secs. Dr Jon Evans explains the nuclear physics behind the measurement of soil moisture at COSMOS-UK stations and why is it important to measure soil moisture at all.

Daily COSMOS-UK soil wetness status for the month of January 2026

The UKCEH’s COSMOS-UK network is designed to use low energy cosmic ray neutrons from the Sun and outer space to measure soil moisture. It also detects raised levels from energetic solar events that can impact critical infrastructure. Such an event was picked up in 2025. cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/News_Events

#siteofthemonth for Jan 2026 is Bickley Hall Farm, a 210-acre organic working farm/HQ of Cheshire Wildlife Trust in rural Cheshire. It's wildlife-friendly ethos supports hundreds of feeding farmland birds. A great venue for environmental education field trips. Soils are sands and sandy loams.

cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul... The December 2025 soil moisture summary is now available. The soil moisture recovery across the COSMOS-UK network largely stalled during a drier spell late in December.

Daily COSMOS-UK soil wetness status for the month of December 2025

Daily COSMOS-UK soil wetness status for the month of November 2025

December #siteofthemonth is Plynlimon, one of the oldest sites in the COSMOS-UK network, having hosted environmental monitoring equipment since the 1960s. It is also one of the highest, at 529m in the Cambrian Mountains, on high organic content soil, supporting semi-natural grassland.

cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul... Soil moisture summary for November 2025 is now available. November saw above-average rainfall throughout the UK, leading to continued increases in soil moisture across all COSMOS-UK sites.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... ONLY 3 more days to catch the BBC Radio 4 Farming Today programme featuring the science behind the COSMOS-UK network and how the data is used to inform research on soil moisture patterns and projections on the impact of climate change.

November #siteofthemonth is Spen Farm, at the University of Leeds ‘Smart Farm’, a research farm working with industry and academics to tackle modern agricultural challenges. The farm hosts a range monitoring research tools alongside COSMOS-UK to measure the impact of agriculture on the environment.

cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/resources/mo... The October soil moisture summary is now available. October saw increases in soil moisture across much of the UK, with conditions steadily moving back towards typical autumn levels.

Daily COSMOS-UK soil wetness status for the month of October 2025

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... On Radio 4's Farming Today programme today, UKCEH Micrometeorologist, Dr Jonathan Evans, discusses 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.

October #siteofthemonth is Loddington, East Midlands, run by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust Allerton Project, researching new farming methods so that commercial farming and environmental rejuvenation can co-exist. The clay soils protected crops from the worst of this year’s dry conditions.

cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul... The September soil moisture summary is now available - see link below. September's wet conditions helped soil moisture recovery across norther and western regions, but southern COSMOS-UK sites remained notably dry.

Daily COSMOS-UK soil wetness for the month of September 2025.

Our September siteofthemonth is Cwm Garw, on the southern side of the Preseli Mountains in Pembrokeshire, on a sheep farm, run by independent landowners. We are always grateful to the support of our site hosts – be they part of a large estate, a farming collaborative or operating single-handedly.

cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul... Our COSMOS-UK Soil Moisture Summary for August 2025 is now available. Despite some recovery in July, soil moisture levels across the COSMOS-UK network remained dry at many sites throughout August, reflecting below-average rainfall and warm temperatures.

app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/ceh-online... UKCEH 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. Please complete the survey by 9am Monday 29th September.

August #siteofthemonth is Gisburn Forest, managed by bsky.app/profile/fore... a leading research agency focusing on sustainable forestry and adaptive practices in a time of environmental and climate change. The site at Gisburn lies at the eastern edge of the Forest of Bowland, on rough grassland.

cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul... Our latest soil moisture summary (for the month of August) is now published and shows a partial recovery after a very dry period, but some sites, especially in the South, remain drier than usual.

www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/nati... Register now for the National Environment Monitoring Conference. The aim is to co-create a national UK environmental monitoring community with a collective vision to drive greater impact and deliver evidence-based outcomes in environmental management

cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul... Our latest monthly soil moisture summary - for June 2025 - is now out. As expected, it shows soil moisture levels across most of the COSMOS-UK network have remained very dry.

A small step towards a global soil moisture network was made when the COSMOS-UK team demonstrated the COSMOS-UK test site at UKCEH Wallingford to meteorologists from Ghana. The visitors hope that, with UKCEH collaboration and support, Ghana will be able to establish a similar network of its own.

July #siteofthemonth is Glensaugh, the most northerly and highest of the COSMOS-UK network. This research farm, run by @hutton.ac.uk, is developing innovative climate-positive farming practices to achieve net-zero (or negative) carbon whilst protecting natural assets and financial sustainability.

Registration is now open for the 'Land and water in a changing climate' event. This event on 24 September at the Royal Society will bring together modellers, industry and practitioners to share new developments and visions for the future. Register today - enterprise.mitingu.com/ceh-events/l...

Last week we welcomed Glenn Watts, new Associate Director for Water & Climate Science, to the COSMOS-UK site at Sheepdrove – seen here with technical lead Phil Vincent. Glenn learned about the monitoring network, heard about its successes to date and the challenges as it enters its second decade.

June #siteofthemonth is Henfaes, part of the Henfaes Research Centre, Bangor University, where research takes place at sea-level up to some of the highest points of Eryri National Park (Snowdonia), sponsored by stakeholders such as DEFRA, Welsh Government, NERC, the EU and industry.

Daily COSMOS-UK soil wetness status for the month of May 2025 and what a month it was! Look at those green, yellow and even orange colours.

@rpallanuk.bsky.social Richard Allan, prof. of climate science at the University of Reading, highlights the depletion of soil moisture, when discussing the drought declaration in yesterday's Guardian. Our soil moisture summary for April confirms this: cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul...

May #siteofthemonth is Heytesbury, located in the middle of Salisbury plain, Wiltshire. Like many of the sites in the south of England, soil moisture readings have fallen sharply across all soil depths: cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/sites/HYBRY, evidenced by the breaking up of the soil surface in this image.

The COSMOS-UK soil moisture summary for April reports the lowest April soil moisture levels for quarter of UK network sites. Read how the driest spring in England since 1961 is affecting an independent farmer hosting the Fincham site in north-west Norfolk: cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/News_Events

#EGU25: You can read more about this new research from UKCEH and @universityofleeds.bsky.social on how wet soils can make heatwaves worse—especially in vulnerable regions 🌍 ➡️ www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-med...

We are pleased to announce that the issue with the Wallingford Database upgrade has now been resolved and the COSMOS-UK database is working again as expected. Apologies for the delay and any inconvenience.

All UKCEH Wallingford ORACLE databases are unavailable at the moment because of an upgrade over-running. This means that access to the COSMOS-UK data and updates to the website may be affected. Apologies and the service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Daily COSMOS-UK Soil Wetness status for the month of April 2025

Today sees the start of the next #BigRiverWatch (25.04.25 – 01.05.25), organised by The Rivers Trust. Monitoring the state of our rivers is critical for sustaining important freshwater ecosystems and for driving positive action on river health.

April #siteofthemonth is Hillsborough, at Agri Food and Bio Sciences Institute, Northern Ireland. @afbini.gov.uk is a leading provider of scientific research in agriculture, animal health, food, environment and biosciences. The COSMOS-UK site is on flat, well-grazed grassland on a sandy loam soil.

The COSMOS-UK 2025 maintenance programme starts TODAY at our Stoughton site! A big thank you to all our UK site hosts for supporting this critical work so that we can continue to provide the near-real time soil moisture data for farming, water resources, flood forecasting and land-surface modelling.

The daily COSMOS-UK soil wetness map for the month of March 2024. Look how it's changing to drier conditions as the month progresses, particularly in the south.

Our 'sister' project, FDRI, is running a new (free!) training course. Please see details below.

March #siteofthemonth is Holme Lacy, between two fields of crops that are part of the Holme Lacy College Pound Farm, an organic mixed farm of 230 hectares, producing potatoes, wheat, oats, pea and barley mix, beans and cider apples. A strong emphasis is placed on low carbon, renewable technologies.

Water in soil is what the COSMOS-UK network monitors, run by UKCEH. So World Water Day, on 22 March 2025, is an important one to shout about. Coordinated by UN-Water, the theme for 2025 is Glacier Preservation highlighting the grave concerns for the world and the UK caused by glacier retreats.

The daily COSMOS-UK soil wetness map for the month of February 2025