Live from the USGS catalog

Earthquake
Insights

Are there more earthquakes than usual this year?

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Many people ask whether there have been an unusual number of large earthquakes recently. They may have been told that the number of large earthquakes is increasing. This page shows the data, updated live from the USGS.

Magnitude
Period
Measure Count treats every earthquake as one, so an M6 and an M8 weigh the same.

Moment measures how much the ground moved. Each step up the magnitude scale is about 32× more, so one M8 outweighs a thousand M6s — and a single great earthquake can dominate a whole year.
Catalog A big earthquake is followed by hundreds of smaller ones nearby. Counting them all makes any year with a big earthquake look like a busy year — but that surge is one earthquake, not hundreds of unrelated ones.

Mainshocks only counts each sequence once.
Years

Then why does it feel like there are more?

The number of earthquakes is not what you hear about. The news shows you the ones that caused serious damage, and that is not the same thing at all. Two earthquakes of the same magnitude can have completely different impacts.

Where it happens
Most earthquakes are under the ocean or under empty ground, and nobody notices. The same earthquake under a city is a catastrophe.
How deep it is
A magnitude 6 fifteen kilometers down can collapse buildings. The same magnitude 6 at two hundred kilometers down is barely felt.
What the ground is made of
Soft valley sediment shakes like jelly and amplifies the movement. Hard rock carries shaking much further, so many more people feel it.
What people build
The same shaking that a well-built city shrugs off will flatten unreinforced brick and concrete. This, more than the magnitude, decides how many people die.
What else is nearby
Shaking can crack a dam, breach a chemical plant or damage a nuclear station. That kind of harm outlasts the earthquake by years.
What it sets off
An earthquake under the sea can raise a tsunami that arrives minutes later. One in the mountains can shake a hillside down onto a village or a highway. In some cases, these secondary effects can be deadlier than the shaking itself.
What time it is
An earthquake at three in the morning catches people indoors and asleep. One at three in the afternoon catches them on trains, shopping, at school.

And then there’s the question of what you hear and see. In 1976, a large earthquake on the other side of the world was a newspaper article. Today, it is a bombardment of video clips — some real, some fake — showing people screaming while buildings collapse. News agencies force earthquakes upon you, tell stories of babies pulled from wreckage, report the increasing number of deaths — and then move on within a day or two. When the next earthquake hits, they say, “Remember that other earthquake, and the one before it? Doesn’t it feel like there are more earthquakes these days?” The human side of earthquakes is important, but it is important to balance that with real statistics.

There aren’t more earthquakes than there used to be. You are just seeing far more of them.

We write about earthquakes every week →

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