Recent summer soil moisture drying in Switzerland based on measurements from the SwissSMEX network

Hirschi, Martin; Michel, Dominik; Schumacher, Dominik L.; Preimesberger, Wolfgang; Seneviratne, Sonia I.

doi:10.5194/essd-18-4855-2026

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-4855-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-4855-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

Data description article

|

13 Jul 2026

Data description article |

| 13 Jul 2026

Recent summer soil moisture drying in Switzerland based on measurements from the SwissSMEX network

Martin Hirschi, Dominik Michel, Dominik L. Schumacher, Wolfgang Preimesberger, and Sonia I. Seneviratne

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-4855-2026-supplement

Data sets

SwissSMEX soil moisture data (Hirschi et al. 2026, ESSD) M. Hirschi et al. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000743711

ERA5-Land monthly averaged data from 1950 to present C3S https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.68d2bb30

C3S SM PASSIVE Daily Gap-filled Root-Zone Soil Moisture from merged multi-satellite observations (Version v2) W. Preimesberger et al. https://doi.org/10.48436/9j8ad-z2q11

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Short summary

Drier summers and more frequent droughts were experienced in Switzerland in the last two decades. We present a comprehensive set of in situ soil moisture measurements from the Swiss Soil Moisture Experiment (SwissSMEX) network, covering the period 2010–2025. We document recent measures that have been taken to secure the network and its long-term time series. We use this curated data to analyse reported drying trends.