COSMOS-Europe: A European Network of Cosmic-Ray Neutron Soil Moisture Sensors

Abstract

Abstract. Human-caused climate change increases the occurrence and severity of droughts due to increasing temperatures, altered circulation patterns and reduced snow occurrence. For example, Europe has suffered from drought events in the last decade like never since the beginning of weather recording. Here we present soil moisture data from 65 Cosmic-ray neutron sensors (CRNS) in Europe (COSMOS-Europe for short) covering recent drought events. The CRNS sites are distributed across Europe and cover all major land use types and climate zones in Europe. The raw neutron count data from the CRNS stations were provided by 23 research institutions and processed using state-of-the-art methods. The harmonised processing included correction of the raw neutron counts, and a harmonised methodology for the conversion into soil moisture based on available in-situ information. In addition, information on the data uncertainty is provided with the dataset, information that is particularly useful for remote sensing and modelling applications. This paper presents the current spatiotemporal coverage of CRNS stations in Europe and describes the protocols for data processing from raw measurements to consistent soil moisture products as well as first results on how the recent drought events have been captured by the CRNS network. This harmonised European soil moisture dataset will help both hydrologists and climate scientists to study individual drought events, to understand their causes, to evaluate and improve their modelling, and to estimate the extremity of current events. The dataset, entitled “Dataset of COSMOS-Europe: A European network of Cosmic-Ray Neutron Soil Moisture Sensors”, is shared via Forschungszentrum Jülich: https://doi.org/10.34731/x9s3-kr48 (Bogena and Ney, 2021).

An in situ observation dataset of soil hydraulic properties and soil moisture in a high and cold mountainous area on the northeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

“…However, measuring SM in-situ over large areas is difficult, particularly in mountainous regions, and thus such measurements are scarce (Ochsner et al, 2013;Dorigo et al, 2021).In recent years, numerous long-term SM monitoring networks have been established (e.g. Dorigo et al, 2021;Ochsner et al, 2013;Bogena et al, 2018;Bogena et al, 2021), but only a few of these are in high and cold mountain areas (Che et al, 2021;Su et al, 2011;Jin et al, 2014;Pellet and Hauck, 2017;Zhang et al, 2021), and this limits the improvements to remote sensing products and land surface models for mountainous areas (Li et al, 2021;Xia et al, 2014;Su et al, 2013).…”