Soil moisture plays a key role in the hydrological cycle and the climate system. Although soil moisture can be observed by the means of satellites, ground observations are still crucial for evaluating and improving these satellite products. In this study, we investigate the performance of a consumer low-cost soil moisture sensor in the lab and in the field. We demonstrate that this sensor can be used for scientific applications, for example to create a dataset valuable for satellite validation.

Middle Frequency radars measure winds (between 55 & 100 km altitude). As part of their final year undergraduate project, the lead author used 2 radars in Antarctica to look at how the wind speed varied with the aim of identifying when the wind was too fast to be a real measurement. Instead we discovered that the variance depends strongly on factors in the analysis technique rather than due to natural features such as gravity waves, and that the sun and geomagnetic activity play a role.

We present the development of the RIPLE platform designed for the monitoring at high temporal frequency (~ 10 min) of water discharge, solid fluxes (bedload and suspended load) and properties of fine particles (settling velocity) in mesoscale rivers. Many instruments are integrated in this single, centralized device which is autonomous in energy and connected to the 2G/3G network. A user-friendly interface has been developed enabling to visualize the data collected by the platform.

K index, characterizing the local geomagnetic activity, is generally automatically calculated by algorithms such as KASM, provided and recommended by INTERMAGNET. KASM requires an appropriate K9 value, specific for each observatory. We analyze K values for Italian observatories comparing them with historical German observatories, to establish the best K9 estimation for our stations. A comparison with results from a previous empirical method shows the consistency and reliability of our outcomes.