Talk:Lists of earthquakes

Puerto Rico quake the deadliest?

Could someone check the deadliest quake's list? I highly doubt that over 200.000 people died in Puerto Rico (213.22.144.70 (talk) 02:34, 20 March 2009 (UTC))

GMT or local time?

It's a little odd to use GMT to list the earthquakes instead of local time. For instance the devastating Taiwan earthquake of 1999 happened on September 21 local time, and became known simply as "921" locally much as the terrorist attacks in the USA became known as 9/11. Yet it is listed as happening on 9/20, since that was GMT. So to know what time of day it happened you have to convert the timezones. Wouldn't it be better to go through this list and change all the times to local time with timezone attributions? 68.162.109.30 15:48, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 Reply: I believe it would be appropriate for the local people to use their time, and for the rest of us to use GMT in response to this matter.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.153.212.170 (talk) 19:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC) 

A thirteen and a half year old question, but (just for closure) there is now a definite answer: use both. Use the new (as of yesterday) parameters 'local-date' and 'local-time' for local date-time (hopefully with a timezone), and 'timestamp', which is the UTC time in all-numeric 'yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss' format used for identifying and indexing earthquakes (replacing the mis-used 'origintime'). ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Which earthquakes to include?

Los Angeles quake .. I think in 1971 was 6.1 ... should it be on this summary... EdMc

Approximately 120 earthquakes that size happen each year, it is not feasible to list all of them. Was there anything particulary noteable about that earthquake? Did it cause a lot of destruction? -- Popsracer 23:01, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

So what is the lower limit to the strength of an earthquake to merit addition to this list? If there is a specific limit then I would suggest removing those currently listed without magnitudes as they may be below that limit. SD6-Agent 17:29, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

There's no hard and fast number, but it needs to either be "major" in strength (somewhat subjective, but I'd put it in the high 6.x's), or be particularly notable in damage or other events. Basically, any earthquake that'd be interesting to read about five years from now. As for the ones without magnitudes, they're mostly historical ones, which should stay as they're clearly well-known enough to still be known about centuries later. --Delirium 19:50, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)

It killed 14 people, which is more than the quakes of 29-Jun-1925 or 21-Jul-1952 which are on the list. It is the 10th deadliest earthquake in the US since 1900. It was magnitude 6.6. It was not terribly damaging but did cause the collapse of some modern highway bridges and the modern Olive View Hospital in Sylmar, causing considerable change in building codes. http://www.lafire.com/famous_fires/710209_SylmarEarthquake/1971-0500_SF-EqEdition_1971SFEarthquake.htm --Ttulinsky 00:01, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Matthew White says in http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/quakes.htm : July 28, 1976 Tangshan, China. 242-800,000

He also says this earthquake was the worst single day in human history, and he's generally not wrong. So I think the 242 769 number is probably a severe understatement.

Some other site, http://www.geo.arizona.edu/K-12/azpepp/education/history/china/ says the number is closer to "half a million", which is similar to the half-way point of Matthe White's number. There are other pages quoting the 240 000 a lot and more giving upper ranges of 500 000. So I'll uhm... casually approximate the deaths of hundreds thousand of people and change the number to 400 000.

---

I think that all the 2003 earthquakes should be off the list as there is nothing major about any of them. Rmhermen 23:27, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

Note how the USGS lists earthquakes by magnitude (definition) as 'major' (7.0-7.9) and 'great' (>=8.0). This might be a good distinction to adopt here. Peter Ellis 14:20, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also the May 25-27 1980 Mammoth Lakes quakes should be removed, they are 6's and caused no deaths. They caused a lot of interest at the time because they are near a popular California ski area and with a dormant volcano. --Ttulinsky 00:10, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Major earthquakes

It'd be nice to have a list of earthquakes by intensity as well. When news sources were reporting that "this is the 4th largest earthquake this century", there was no source to turn to to verify that data.(unsigned)

Yes, see the USGS page about the 10 largest earthquakes since 1900, linked to from 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. See USGS Past Earthquakes page, under "Top 10 lists". -- Curps 04:12, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

missing quake: Italy 23 Nov 1980 killed 4800

Seems to be missing from all lists on this page. It is listed in the Wikipedia for news of 1980 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980 ):

"November 23 - A series of earthquakes in southern Italy kills approximately 4,800 people."

This death toll makes it the second most deadly earthquake in a developed country since 1950 (after Kobe 1995), and the deadliest in Europe.

"Significant" Earthquakes-split into 3 objective lists

The list could be changed from a subjectivly chosen list of "Significant" earthquakes with unclear criteria, to a quantitative list, by splitting it into 3 lists:

1. Most Deadly Earthquakes-World
2. Most Deadly Earthquakes-Developed Countries
3. Largest Earthquakes by Magnitude

That would include most of the quakes on the Significant list. Making the list criteria quantitative is an improvement in my opinion.

This would also satisfies the desire of many readers to see the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 or the Northridge quake of 1994 in a list of major earthquakes when they do not make any list of major earthquakes by size or number of deaths.

--Ttulinsky 23:50, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Positive and negative longitudes

I always thought it was standard to use negative numbers for EAST longitude and positive for WEST. That's the opposite of what this article does. Was I mistaken in what I thought was standard, or is there a reason to deviate? (I once hear the head of the math department at MIT (David Vogan, who has since been succeeded as department head), speaking before about 150 undergraduates, state that it's appropriate that longitudes in Europe are negative since Europe is a cultural cesspool. No one responded that east longitudes are positive and west negative. (Nor did anyone complain about that characterization of Europe.) So I'm not the only one to think that's standard.) Michael Hardy 01:10, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is pretty basic knowledge, but I'm glad you brought this up, because I was able to fix this glaring error in the longitude article. You don't have to believe me though:

• http://jwocky.gsfc.nasa.gov/teacher/latlonarchive.html
• http://ioc.unesco.org/oceanteacher/resourcekit/M3/coordinates.htm
• http://www.geo-orbit.org/sizepgs/latlong.html

—Cantus…☎ 07:24, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

While this may be a long dead issue I've always had a high view of MIT. However given the above charaterization of a former math department head and the undergraduates there, I wonder whether I should modify my opinion. Other then the glaring error and the rather silly characterization of Europe, the above also completely ignores the fact that in fact a significant part of the world is in West longitudes including Asia, most of Oceania, and a significant part of Africa. Of course, if the above characterization of David Vogan is true, perhaps he didn't even know Asia, Oceania or Africa existed or thought they didn't matter. It also ignores the issue as raised of east being right as on a cartesian coordinate system (I assume David didn't claim that south is positive). However most significantly perhaps, east being positive makes most sense considering the rotation of the earth (think of why timezones to the east of the GMT are +). However perhaps I'm being unfair to the students. Having been a student myself, I recognise they might have just decided to ignore the idiot rather then make a fuss about someone who was clearly wrong and seemingly a bit stupid. Nil Einne 17:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Ashkhabad earthquake

Why Ashkhabad's (Turkmenistan now, than USSR) earthquake is not in the list? It happened in 1948, night 5-6 october. It caused 110,000 deaths by official sources (180,000 by other sourses: http://www.scgis.ru/russian/cp1251/dgggms/2-98/nikonov1.htm), magnitude 7.5 (up to 10.0 by other sources: http://geo.1september.ru/1998/geo41.htm). 98% of building in the city were distroyed.

Komap 16:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

More missing major earthquakes-outside US

New one today: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDN23900.txt 61.88.76.4 01:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

What about the 1948 Turkmenistan (then USSR) quake? 7.3, killed 176,000 (according to Turkmenistan, 110k other sources) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Ashgabat_earthquake —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wreave (talk • contribs) 15:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Empty fatalities column

If the fatalities column is empty, does that mean "0" or "Unknown" ? (unsigned)

It means 0 (unsigned)

Order of material

Having just looked at this page a number of things strike me as odd in how the material is ordered:

• Most recent Earthquakes are way down the page.
• Wouldn't the "records" (top 10 casualties, top 10 magnitude) be better near the top?
• Wouldn't a reverse date order make more sense?

Having made these comments, here is the ordering I propose: Most recent (reverse date, newest 10? only), Top 10 Casualties, Top 10 Magnitude, All major earthquakes (if someone feels like taking the time to reverse date this, go right ahead, but it isn't for me), non-USGS listed. I'm willing to make the change, but I'd like feedback before doing it as to whether it's a good idea. --Random Chaos 22:52, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The 1201 Syria Earthquake

I have just looked through the list of the deadliest earthquakes. I am appaled that the July 5, 1201 Upper Egypt or Syria earthquake that killed 1,100,000 is not in there!!

Was it in Upper Egypt or was it in Syria? Upper Egypt means the south of Egypt and is a long way away from Syria. Anthony Appleyard 06:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

The earthquake is indeed listed. However the above is a relevant point. Upper Egypt and Syria are not the same thing, not even close so calling it Upper Egypt or Syria is a bit confusing. Did it affect both Upper Egypt and Syria (and everything in between) or what? Nil Einne 17:57, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Strange that such a huge earthquake is not mentioned anywhere else. It's not in the list of deadliest quakes, or in the list of largest earthquakes. It is not mentioned in the list of notable events for the year 1201. Even it's location is unsure by thousands of km. I'm starting to think perhaps it is a hoax/vandalism. Can anyone cite a source for this major historical event? Astronaut 20:02, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I've done some research. A brief Google search revealed several mentions by trustwothy-looking sites including universities and geology journals. However, the USGS does not mention this earthquake; maybe due to a lack of detailed information from so long ago (or maybe I didn't look hard enough :-). To summarise: there was an earthquake in 1201 which affected the "eastern mediterranean" and killed around a million people in a wide area from Syria to Upper Egypt. Astronaut 06:28, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I've created a page on the 1202 Syria earthquake, which may be the same event. A minority of sources have them as two separate earthquakes. Mikenorton (talk) 12:26, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Anthony Appleyard's edits

# (cur) (last)  08:43, 21 October 2005 Cantus (return to established version)
# (cur) (last) 07:58, 21 October 2005 Anthony Appleyard (rev vandalism (someone added a pointer to a videogame))

In this part of this page's editing history, I can understand Cantus reverting to his version. But my reasons for my edits are:-

• In a table with many columns and many rows, wide margins waste much space, and make the table sprawly, and make table entries fold onto another line of text when they need not fold, thus also creating a blank extra line in all other boxes in that row of boxes.
• For the same reason I replaced United States by USA everywhere (which is the usual form used in a list of addresses), and "northwest" etc by the very well known useful abbreviations "NW" etc, since Wikipedia's editor has been moaning that this file is too big (40 kilobytes).
• For the same reason I removed the line break in the frequent table entry "Turkey see NAFZ"

Anthony Appleyard 06:32, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Where is "Sua-ho" Taiwan?

I LIVE in Taiwan and have never heard of Sua-ho. That's not even Chinese. Could someone actually confirm what the hell that's talking about so it can be changed to something not completely WRONG? (unsigned)

While the above poster could have been more polite, it appears he/she may have a point as the only mention of Sua ho I can find on Google appear to be from wikipedia and copiers/mirrors. Of course, it's possible it's just the name for a small place in Taiwan that is really hard of or spoken about. Nil Einne 17:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

chilean earthquakes

En la lista faltan algunos terremotos muy importante ocurridos en Chile, como por ejemplo el de 1985 en la zona central del pais, el cual destruyo muchas estructuras en Valparaiso y Santiago, y dejo mas de 1.000.000 de damnificados.

Tambien falta uno que ocurrio en Valdivia el dia 21 de Mayo de 1960, el dia anterior al famoso terremoto de Valdivia.

Sorry for say it in spanish, but my english is not very good. -(Anonymous author)

Here is a rough translation of the above Spanish:

The list lacks some very important earthquakes that happened in Chile, like for example one that occurred in 1985 in the central zone of the country, which destroyed many structures in Valparaiso and Santiago, and left 1,000,000 victims. The list also is missing one that occurred in Valdivia on the 21st of May of 1960, one day before the famous earthquake of Valdivia.

I hope I accurately translated what the above person was trying to say. --Cab88 17:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

You just missed Pais, which translates to English as "country".

Lack of links

Practically none of the tables in this article contain links to the earthquakes' articles. I added some for the deadliest-earthquakes table. Without these, the article is close to useless! Jdorje 23:10, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

1957 Daly City (San Francisco suburb) earthquake

How about the 5.3 earthquake in Daly City, California (just south of San Francisco) on March 22, 1957? At the time, I believe it was the biggest quake in the S.F. area since 1906. Richwales 19:49, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

Why is the magnitude listed as 9.0-9.3? As far as I can tell from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake page, while the original magnitude was 9.0, all sources have since upgraded it to between 9.1-9.3. Is there any source that still lists it as 9.0? If not, surely we should list it as 9.1-9.3 NOT 9.0-9.3? Nil Einne 17:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Lima, 1746

Lima, Peru was hit badly by an earthquake on October 28, 1746, and is mentioned on the 1746 page. Alpheus 06:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Watch out for vandalism, I'm not registered, so I'm not gonna edit, but someone fix that unibrow thing in the table. Thank you. (unsigned)

26 Dec 2006 Taiwan Earthquake

The earthquake (on the 26 Dec 2006 which happens 91km SSE of Koahshiung, Taiwan) not only interrupted phone services but also interrupted internet services in many parts of Asia like Taiwan, Japan & Singapore. This is the source. Aranho 13:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

List needs cleaning up

The list of recent earthquakes contains far too many minor earthquakes. This list should be tidied up to focus on major earthquakes. A list of all earthquakes would be impossible to maintain. Carcharoth 13:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Since the second list is not listed by the USGS I added a column in the table for the source of each particular item. (Such a column in the USGS list would be pointless since it is the source of each item on it). Anynobody 05:10, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

recent activity

I removed the addition of some statistics and commentary about current events such as a recent spate of major quakes seeming to have diminished since April - this page is a list of historical quakes; if that information belongs anywhere, it is not here - and I would argue that ths time period "since April" is inappropriate for an encyclopedia... Cheers Geologyguy 03:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Coordinates & microformats

Merging the "latitude" and "longitude" columns as "coordinates" would allow use of the {{coord}} template, which has many benefits for users (end editors) including choice of display format and the emission of a geo microformat. See, for example List of impact craters in Canada, where this has been done. Would anyone object if I request a bot to do this? I'd also ask the bot owner (or be willing myself) to add hCard microformat mark-up to each table row. An example would be the table of features on Manchester Ship Canal. Andy Mabbett 13:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The current list is a mess

Why not just have one single list with the most recent earthquakes at the top, and historic ones at the bottom? The USGS list of significant quakes has not been updated for more than 2 years, and plenty of significant quakes have happened, so it is surely pointless having it there? RapidR 11:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

2004 earthquake

With respect to the editor a representetive IS NOT the magnitude. The highest confirmed magnitude so far for the 2004 indian ocean earthquake is 9.31 so that makes it the 2nd largest earthquake in recorded history which means it will stay that way until evidence proves it's true magnitude.
I updated some information according to 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Although in my opinion, the number of fatalities and the magnitude of earthquake provided by United States Geological Survey is seemed to be not very reliable, I know that the 300,000 fatalities and the 9.31 magnitude are old numbers. Therefore, I decided to change the number and the rank for consistency. If anybody feels that my action is wrong, please say so here... QQ (talk) 19:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

What's the source for the 9.31? That's suspiciously precise for such a hard thing to measure. 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake lists 9.1-9.3, with 9.1 being the USGS number and 9.3 being a more recent number. Of course, the accuracy of the other 9.3 quake is even more in question. Bhudson (talk) 05:03, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

the chart needs major fixes

If you rank the quakes by date, they are listed alphabetically, starting with April 1 and ending September 4th. It should be ranked by date. The fatalities ranking doesn't seem to work well either. Kingturtle (talk) 21:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone added colspan tags to a few of the entries which messed up the sorting. I have removed the colspans and added blanks columns back to fix the sorting; however the lat/long columns for a few of the entries are now blank... actually, I guess I'll go look up that info also. Aepryus (talk) 14:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't find the lat/long data at the USGS site. Not, sure where to get info on the location of epicenters. Aepryus (talk) 14:56, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

USGS list contradictions

Hi. The source for the USGS list lists almost all the earthquakes listed in the section "not listed above", for 2008. Also, Sichuan earthquake is found in both sections. Please fix this problem, because the actual USGS list for 2008 is way more than the one listed in our list. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 20:37, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Too long

This list is far too long. It would be better if it were split by country. For example, see lists of volcanoes. Black Tusk (talk) 19:40, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Used WikiCleaner to fix broken links to other WP pages, since the article is long, had to run program twice, please don't reverse! Thanks--Funandtrvl (talk) 16:33, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
• Perhaps we could have a page for 'list of earthquakes by magnitude' and 'list of earthquakes by country' and perhaps list by year as well? - AndrewJ

Skopje, Republic of Macedonia - 1963 earthquake

I have noticed that most locations are followed by present-day country names, for example Turkey, Greece, etc., although those countries didn't exist by those names at the time of the listed events. This approach seems reasonable, as it would be inconvenient to a present-day reader to use historical names for the locations/countries. Following this analogy, I have changed Skopje, Yugoslavia to Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. Crnorizec (talk) 08:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

For cases where it'd be anachronistic, most of the other entries try to use a formulation like "former location (now present location)". For example, the 1428 Catalonia earthquake says "Catalonia (now Spain)", and the 1797 Sumatra earthquake says "Sumatra, East Indies (now Indonesia)". That seems like a more sensible approach to me than using modern state names in anachronistic contexts, e.g. claiming that something from the 1600s happened in "the United States" or something from 1963 happened in "the Republic of Macedonia". --Delirium (talk) 08:32, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

suggestion to prune recent quakes

The 2009 list has far more earthquakes than really belong on a list of "significant" earthquakes, including many of quite low magnitudes. I'd recommend, as a first cut, to remove those with magnitudes under 5.0, except any that are significant enough to have their own Wikipedia article. Thoughts? --Delirium (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Improve article

The List of earthquakes is way too long. So I moved "Recent earthquakes not listed above" to List of 2004-2009 earthquakes. It looks better now. But if you don’t like it, you can change it back and delete the sub-article. At least, I try to improve this article. Do you like what I have done so far on this article?--Michael (talk) 21:43, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

It is a lot better, but I think the name of the new article needs to be changed to something a bit more persistent that wouldn't need changing every year (e.g. List of 21st century earthquakes), or perhaps split it by year, List of earthquakes in 2009 etc. RapidR (talk) 17:32, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Public Notice

 Done –Michael (talk) 06:16, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Moved: Other earthquakes not listed by the USGS to Historical Earthquakes

Moved: Recent earthquakes not listed above TO List of 2004-2009 earthquakes

Removed: cleanup and too long TAGS

If you have eny questions, Please Send your comments to my talk page--Michael (talk) 06:16, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed that this list had become too big, but I don't think that moving just the 'earthquakes not listed by the USGS' to Historical Earthquakes was the best solution. Ideally there should be one list of historical earthquakes that includes the USGS list as well. Also the recent earthquakes should be named 'List of earthquakes from 2004' or similar, so it doesn't need to be renamed in 8 months time and it should include those from the USGS list. Mikenorton (talk) 11:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Does it look better now?--Michael (talk) 01:07, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

The main problem that I have is that the USGS list fails to include several very large earthquakes such as the M 7.8 2001 Kunlun earthquake and the M 8.0 1855 Wairarapa earthquake. We need a single list IMO containing all significant earthquakes. If we're going to split it, to keep the size within bounds, perhaps we should have a list for 'earthquakes before 1901' another for '20th century earthquakes' and finally recent earthquakes. Earthquakes before 1900 are in almost all cases not recorded instrumentally and the level of data that we have for them is less, in many cases we're guessing about the size, location and cause. Most of those in the 20th century are, in contrast, well located with good records of the damage caused and were in many cases recorded instrumentally. I am also unconvinced about 2004 as the start date for recent earthquakes rather than 2001, it looks more like 'earthquakes since the start of wikipedia'. I am aware that combining the existing USGS and 'historical earthquake' lists will be time consuming but I feel that the result would be a lot more useful. Mikenorton (talk) 07:15, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I've now created a list of twentieth century earthquakes, I'm currently combining the USGS and other lists for a revised Historical earthquakes page. You should find that all the earthquakes in the new list have either a link to a specific article about the earthquake or to a source. I would appreciate other views on this. I'm rather hoping that people will like what they see, which would encourage me to finish the job. Mikenorton (talk) 16:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Historical earthquakes page now combined with USGS significant earthquakes list, As above, all events now have either a source or a link to the relevant earthquake's article. Next task is to add the post 2000 earthquakes from the two old lists into the List of 2004-2009 earthquakes and rename it 'List of recent earthquakes'. No-one seems to be objecting to what I'm doing, so I'm ploughing ahead. Mikenorton (talk) 12:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the List of 2004-2009 earthquakes page should be renamed 'List of 21st Century earthquakes', consistent with the List of twentieth century earthquakes, which itself in my opinion should be renamed 'List of 20th century earthquakes'. Also, the 21st century list is missing events from 2001-2003. RapidR (talk) 00:34, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd be happy to see the twentieth century list renamed as you suggest, it looks better, ditto the recent earthquakes for consistency, although the current name seems fine to me as well. Mikenorton (talk) 14:36, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

chart cosmetics AND what is criteria for earthquake to be included?

i'm clearly not an expert on editing charts on wikipedia (just make 1st changes (minor) to charts in last few days). if i could figure how to i would, for easier readbility, etc. -

• make "date" column wider (such that "september 30, 2009" (for example) would fit on one line)
• make "fatalities" much narrower (only 1 line has extended text - which, if needed, could be thrown to a footnote)
• put, at a minimum, the "country" in a separate column (so that chart can be sorted by country) (ideally, the u.s. state would be a separate column (for further sorting) but that may be too much to fathom)

anyone that could help?

also, what is criteria for being on this list? a minimum magnitude? of what? i would expect language explaining that before the chart.--71.183.238.134 (talk) 00:30, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Magnitude of Tangshan Earthquake

Please check for consistency. The magnitude of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake should be 7.8 according to many sources including the "Tangshan earthquake" page in Wikipedia.

According to this USGS page, 7.8 was the initial estimate, later reduced to 7.5. Magnitude estimates often show considerable variation. The article may need to be updated, but that would need some checking around in the scientific literature. Mikenorton (talk) 16:15, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

List not correct

According to the U.S.G.S there are other earthquakes and some listed here are not as strong as the list claims. [1] Seeing as the U.S.G.S are the experts on the matter I would refer to the list. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:00, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

They are not the only experts in the world. The USGS generally does an early estimate of the magnitude and then sticks with that. Further analysis may refine the numbers, up or down. Is there a specific earthquake that you think is incorrect, and are you only referring to the list by magnitude? Mikenorton (talk) 16:07, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify matters: there are multiple magnitude scales in use (see Seismic magnitude scales), which measure different aspects of a quake, or do so in different ways or with different data, so having different magnitudes (according to different scales) is neither unusual, nor invalid. Initial reports are also subject to large errors, and are subsequently refined. The Advanced National Seismic System, a partnership of the USGS (including the NEIC) and other regional seismic networks which was just getting organized then this discussion opened, is the premier source for early reports. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:23, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

I spotted some errors

I once did an analysis of earthquakes to see if they were more numerous/greater since 1914. It was demonstrated conclusively that they were - http://www.webspawner.com/users/cauthonmattpage8/

Anyway I note that the Wiki list has some apparent errors.

Missed earthquakes

• 1896 Japan M8.5
• 1868 Chili M9.0
• 1730 Chili M8.7
• 1687 Peru M8.5

I would also suggest you check and double check these as i have never heard of them:

• 1920 China M8.6
• 1737 Kamachaka M8.3
• 1575 Chili M8.5

You need to find reference for these last three as their were no record of these when i investigated these a few years ago

Matt Cauthon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.0.116.31 (talk) 19:38, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I immediately noticed that the 1868 quake was missing. I can't even find a reference to this quake anywhere on Wikipedia. Very strange. — RockMFR 15:10, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I've created 1868 Arica earthquake for the 1868 one. — RockMFR 15:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec)Well, the Arica quake is listed on the Historical earthquakes page, but it won't have an article until someone writes it (hah I see you have). I'll add it to my 'to do' list but there are lots of notable earthquakes out there without articles, anyone can join in. Answering Matt, the best estimate for the 1896 Meiji-Sanriku earthquake is a surface wave magnitude of 7.2. The 1575 Valdivia earthquake has an article, as does the 1737 Kamchatka although very little info is included, also the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake. The 1687 Peru and 1730 Chile events don't appear to be in any of our articles as yet, I'll check these out. Mikenorton (talk) 15:57, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I've added the 1687 Peru event to Historical earthquakes, I've found references to the 1730 Chile event, but that will take me longer to add as I try to find a location (it's not in my favourite global catalogue). Mikenorton (talk) 21:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, found that one too and added it. Mikenorton (talk) 22:01, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Articles now exist for both the 1687 Peru earthquake and the 1730 Valparaiso earthquake. Mikenorton (talk) 18:03, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for checking and reviewing. I just happened to be talking about earthquakes with someone and reviewed this list again. I have noticed that a number of historic earthquakes have appeared in this list that i was not aware of. Double checking against my list i realise that some have crept from the lower magnitude into this higher magnitude. So for example i had the 1877 Chili down as an 8.3 but on this list it is down as 8.5 i.e. just above the threshold for the larger earthquakes. I am pretty sure various authorities have this down as 8.3 and can only suggest unless there are secular authorities who say it is 8.5 i would recommend that wikipedia simply follow the experts and put 8.3. Mat Cauthon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.131.110.104 (talk) 08:15, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually various seismologists have estimated it as up to Magnitude 9 (Mw). Peyrat et al. in 2006 give Mw ~ 9.0 [2], Bejar-Pizarro et al. 2010 give Mw=8.8 [3], Peyrat et al. 2010 give Mw=8.9 [4], so 8.5 is probably at the lower end of the estimated range (note that all these sources involve the same group of seismologists). Zamudio et al. 2005 give Mw=8.6 [5] & Bilek 2009 gives Mw=8.8 [6], so M>8.6 is actually the consensus as far as I can make out. Mikenorton (talk) 17:47, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Minor re-name of page

I think that this page should be renamed "Lists of Earthquakes", i.e. that the word List should be plural as there is more than one list accessed through this page. Any thoughts? OLEF641 (talk) 09:07, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Strictly speaking it should be 'List of earthquake lists'. I don't think that the current title is a problem personally. Mikenorton (talk) 23:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

USGS list of earthquakes by magnitude

I reverted the recent edit to the 'List of earthquakes by magnitude', that essentially copied the USGS list sorted by magnitude. The problem with that list is that the magnitudes given aren't necessarily those most generally accepted and some earthquakes are missing entirely, such as the 8.8-9.2 1833 Sumatra earthquake. Mikenorton (talk) 21:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Ranking for 1138 Aleppo earthquake ?

The Template:Deadliest earthquakes ranks the Aleppo quake 5th, the USGS source currently quoted in 1138 Aleppo earthquake ranks it 3rd. How would you resolve this discrepancy for the article on the Aleppo quake. -- KlausFoehl (talk) 13:52, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Deadliest earthquakes list

A couple of problems with the deadliest earthquakes list.

• The notes for the 1138 Aleppo earthquake seem to be saying that 230,000 people didn't actually die in that quake because the 230,000 number represents the total deaths from the Aleppo quake and another one. So, surely, the more than 230,000 deaths in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake should rank above the not-really-230,000 deaths at Aleppo?

• The notes for the 1703 Genroku earthquake appear to be copy-pasted from the article text but change the death toll from the tsunami from the 10,000 quoted in the article to 100,000. The earthquake's article cites two sources, one of which claims 10,000 deaths; the other, 100,000. So which is it?

Dricherby (talk) 01:30, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

There are real problems with this list. I have started to assemble a spreadsheet of death tolls and their supporting references, but I've run out of steam for the moment. Taking the 1703 Genroku earthquake as an example, I can find estimates in reliable sources for the following death tolls - 5233, 10000, 37000+, 100000, 150000, 226000, 270000 - so which number should we use? It's difficult enough getting a definitive figure for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which happened last year. The 1138 Aleppo earthquake is a little simpler in that there is a very good source saying that the figure of 230,000 actually includes the deaths from three separate earthquakes, but the same source does not provide an alternative number. My aim is to find some sort of rationale for handling all these different estimates. Part of me says - just get rid of the list ordered by death toll and replace it with a chronological list of earthquakes with estimated death tolls of over 50,000 (or whatever). Mikenorton (talk) 23:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

There is a discrepency with the indian ocean earthquake magnitude

I noticed in the "largest earthquakes by magnitude" section it says this earthquake was 9.2 magnitude, whereas in the "deadliest earthquakes on record" section it says that this earthquake was 9.1 magnitude. I do not know which one is correct, but I thought that I would just bring it to attention. 76.88.196.198 (talk) 16:46, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Various sources give estimates in the range 9.1 to 9.3 and to quote our article on this earthquake "Dr. Hiroo Kanamori of the California Institute of Technology believes that M_w 9.2 is a good representative value for the size of this great earthquake." Mikenorton (talk) 21:14, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

While 9.2 is a good representative value, a similar assessment of the Prince William Sound earthquake seems to be lacking. From my reading of the USGS analyses, the wikipedia articles on the two quakes, and what little I remember from Hiroo's class (which I took in Spring 2005), the use of 9.2 for this event in any ranking would require a similar reevaluation of the other large events. Most lists seem to consider the 1964 Alaska Earthquake (Prince William Sound) to be slightly stronger than the 2004 Indian Ocean event, but a lack of instrumentation then/there has limited further analysis. So for consistency sake, I would advocate listing the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake as a 9.1-9.3, but ranking it like a 9.1. If others disagree, I will bow to further research. Elriana (talk) 19:01, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

If you look towards the bottom of this page (USGS update), you will see a discussion on the various magnitudes being quoted by the USGS these days. For the 2004 quake, they give two estimates at M9.0 and one at M9.2 - if we take the ISC-GEM catalogue that also gives a M9.0. As stated in that section, I think that the aim should be to use the most recently recalculated numbers (using the ISC-GEM for most of them, now that the USGS seems to be using them for earthquakes before 2000). For the 1964 Alaska earthquake that catalogue gives M9.3±0.2. Mikenorton (talk) 20:17, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll add some comments there regarding opinions on the magnitudes listed. But the point I wished to make was that the listing of magnitudes, particularly for the largest few events, should be consistent enough to preserve the common ranking. Regardless of the magnitude listed, most resources rank the top 4 in the same order. Elriana (talk) 18:03, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

"Recorded History" Bit

According to sources the recent earthquake was the 5th NOT THE 7th most intense earthquake ever recorded, so my question is why does Wikipedia have earthquakes here dating from the 1700's if records did not start to be kept since about 1900? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 19:57, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Before 1900 very few earthquakes were recorded instrumentally with seismographs. However, there are a number of ways in which magnitudes can be estimated from isoseismal maps, from uplift patterns (e.g. the 365 Crete earthquake data taken from raised shorelines or the 1833 Sumatra earthquake where the data were taken from coral microatolls), from the lengths of surface ruptures and from modelling the records of associated tsunamis, as in the 1707 Hōei earthquake or the 1700 Cascadia earthquake. All these earthquakes were recorded in contemporary documents and have sourced magnitude estimates which are then reported in the list. Mikenorton (talk) 21:09, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Largest vs Strongest

Shouldn't this listing be titled the "Strongest measured Earthquakes"? Earthquake energy is measured in magnitude and strong or weak would be the right descriptor. Its not a tree so its not a question of height, and its not a Mountain (volume) or landmass (area).

A recent edit made this change but I have reverted it because 'largest' is the more commonly used term as in Largest Earthquakes in the World Since 1900, this is also backed up by an analysis of hits on GoogleScholar and GoogleBooks. Mikenorton (talk) 11:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Largest earthquake list ranking

Someone seems to have edited the ranking on the list. Instead of earthquakes with equal magnitudes tying for the same rank, the list now goes from 1 to 24, with quakes of equal magnitude having been ranked possibly arbitrarily. Is there a reason for this particular ranking, or is there a Wikipedia policy that says that items with tied rankings aren't allowed? Please enlighten me. Sang'gre Habagat (talk) 21:30, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks stupid.

But, another thing, how should the earthquakes which have 8.7–9.2 (#9), 8.7-9.0 (#12), 8.5–9.0 (#16). They are now listed with the lower bound of estimation. Should/could they be listed with the upper limit? 85.217.34.63 (talk) 18:13, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I reordered the list without noticing this talk page entry; sorry if this has been a point of contention. I put my ranking criteria in a comment in the page source: first by magnitude, second by upper magnitude if it's listed, then finally by date. Also added back in ties, the list doesn't make sense without them. I agree quakes with a range are a bit of an issue, but I think ranking them primarily by their lower magnitude is more appropriate; though they ARE listed like described above (e.g., an 9.0–9.5 would come before a 9.0–9.3, which would come before any 9.0s without a range, but their rank # would still be listed as a tie.) –flodded ☃ (gripe) 06:45, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I think there are two options here:

1. Create a shorter list to cover recorded earthquakes and a second to list estimated earthquakes.
2. Keep the combined list, but rank them as they are ranked by a reliable source (like the USGS).

Either way, if there is a tie of N entries, the next rank is increased by N. If there are 3 ties for #6, the next entry is #9. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 07:02, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

First off, the list looks a lot better now, thanks to flodded for that. As to the two options listed above

• Magnitudes for instrumentally recorded earthquakes may still vary depending on source. If you look at the moment magnitude scale and seismic moment articles you will see that the estimated magnitude (and they are all estimates) is based on knowledge of the size of the rupture area and the displacement. Initial estimates may then be changed as more data becomes available e.g. when the aftershocks have defined the full extent of the rupture area. It's wrong to give the impression that magnitude estimates area necessarily more unreliable for historical earthquake before seismographs became commonly used, estimates for the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake range between 9.1 and 9.3.
• If you keep the combined list (which I prefer) then you are stuck with how to rank them — the USGS does not include all the events listed here, such as the 1833 Sumatra earthquake. I think that flodded's approach is the best that we're going to get. Mikenorton (talk) 08:54, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd go with the 2nd/current format as well, keep the combined list. It's not as useful a list if it's split up, even if it's technically more accurate. –flodded ☃ (gripe) 11:59, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I made a change which got reverted pending this discussion's resolution, which I still think is a good one: sort by lower magnitude (insurance against overenthusiastic ratings), but I broke ties using the upper estimate. This reduced the number of 3+-way ties and generally made the list more readable. I also like flodded's ordering criteria. 71.41.210.146 (talk) 13:35, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

My rationale behind calling those ones ties is that they're older quakes with estimated ratings, thus I though I'd err on the side of caution and pay more attention to the lower bound. Perhaps we should look for information on whether these estimated quakes tend to fall more along the average of their range? If that was the case, then I'd see a clear case for moving them up. I do agree that the list would like nicer that way (I don't like that we have those huge clumps like at 16th place and nothing but ties after the top 3.) However, accuracy is more important than appearance. Opinions? –flodded ☃ (gripe) 16:11, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad the ranking is gone, but there seems to be no consistency in how the list is ordered. For example, the 2011 Sendai earthquake is listed above the 1952 Kamchatka earthquake, despite the fact that both were magnitude 9; on the other hand, the 1906 Ecuador-Colombia earthquake is listed above the 2010 Chile earthquake, and both of these are 8.8.

When we have two earthquakes of equal magnitude, do we list the most recent one above the earlier one? Or the other way around? Thoughts? -- 78.129.222.39 (talk) 06:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Removed pie chart

A pie chart comparing the seismic moment release of the three largest earthquakes for the hundred year period from 1906 to 2005 with that for all earthquakes of magnitudes <6, 6 to 7, 7 to 8 and >8 for the same period

I've removed this pie chart from the article because it does not seem to make sense. I.e. It fails to take into account logarithmic nature of the values: an 8 should be 10× ~32 times the size of a 7. Also it's a poor way of displaying this kind of information. —Pengo 05:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it does take the logarithmic nature into account. For example, the slice for the 2004 Sumatra earthquake (M9.3) appears to be about half the size of the 1960 Chile earthquake (M9.5), consistent with a full unit of magnitude difference being 32x more powerful and, therefore, 0.2 of a unit being twice as powerful. Perhaps you're confused because the brown, orange, yellow and green slices represent the total of all earthquakes of a given range of magnitude, not a single earthquake (compare the tiny slice for the 1906 San Francisco quake). The pie chart conveys useful information — for example that the three most powerful earthquakes in the period 1906-2005 were responsible for very nearly half of the total energy release in that century. I'm not sure the pie chart really belongs in this article but I think it ought to be included somewhere. Dricherby (talk) 17:54, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I see. Some of the values are totals, while others are single earthquakes. Well the description is poor, and the data used is not given (the total number of quakes would be a start). I also don't really see the value in comparing the total energy released by a large number of recorded earthquakes over a long period of time with another energy total over of a large number of recorded earthquakes over the same lengthy time. What is this chart meant to be illustrating exactly? What meaning is there in displaying earthquake energies in this way? It also seems it has selection bias as well, as minor offshore quakes would go unreported, while large ones would be, making the type of comparison it makes fairly meaningless. Surely a logarithmic bar graph would make more sense for comparing scale of quakes, and a separate chart could be used to compare the total count of different sized quakes reported? I might have a go at making a new chart (or charts) if no one else does. —Pengo 22:55, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The purpose of this chart is to show the relative contributions of a few very powerful earthquakes to the seismic moment release compared to all earthquakes of other magnitudes recorded during the same time period. I really don't see the problem with the chart, although the caption could certainly be clearer. Mikenorton (talk) 23:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The main problem is that it's a pie chart. —Pengo 05:08, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand why, pie charts are used to compare relative proportions - which is the case here. Mikenorton (talk) 10:26, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I've expanded the caption above in an attempt to be clearer about what the pie chart shows. Mikenorton (talk) 11:55, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone object to the pie chart with the revised caption being added back into the article? Mikenorton (talk) 13:51, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

There being no response, I'm adding it back. Mikenorton (talk) 11:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Tangshan?

The USGS says that the Tangshan earthquake of 1976 was likely the deadliest in 400 years, second only to the 1556 quake in all of recorded history, and yet it's not even listed here. The official death toll was 255,000, and the USGS estimates the actual toll was 655,000. Even the official toll is high enough to warrant inclusion on the deadliest quake list. What gives? Phiwum (talk) 02:16, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Just old-fashioned vandalism of the template - fixed, thanks for pointing it out. Mikenorton (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Duplication

The 1755 Lisbon, Portugal quake is listed twice with two different magnitude estimates. It's referring to the same quake, so which one is correct? CFLeon (talk) 01:39, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Updating "Deadliest earthquakes on record" section

In addition to changing some numbers and therefore the order of the earthquakes, shouldn't the publisher be the USGS instead of "Earthquake.usgs.gov"? If no one objects, I will change the publisher named in that section. Mauri96 (talk) 22:11, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry not respond earlier - I've filled in that ref a bit. What were the changes to be made to numbers and order? Mikenorton (talk) 22:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Earthquakes by magnitude

I've reverted the recent addition of three earthquakes with magnitudes higher than the 1960 Valdivia quake, because the NOAA list only one greater than 9.4 [7]- the 1960 Valdivia earthquake. Mikenorton (talk) 13:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I see that the NOAA mention a value of 9.7 from one source for the 1827 Bogota earthquake, although they use 7.0 themselves and other sources give values under 8. For the 1868 Arica earthquake, there are estimates up to 9.0 and the 1812 Caracas earthquake, there is one estimate of 9.6, with all other being less than 8. I note that the very high numbers come from the same source - Ocola 1984. These numbers do not appear to have been picked up by any other seismologists as representative. Mikenorton (talk) 22:31, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

April 11 2012 Earthquake

There is a duplicate entry for the April 11 2012 Sumatra Earthquake. The Sumatra name seems more widely used, but the Ace name already has an article. TSawala (talk) 09:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the duplicate, thanks for pointing it out. Mikenorton (talk) 12:12, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

2012 Indian Ocean Earthquake

For some reason everyone says this is a 8.6 earthquake when it is really an 8.7 earthquake. Don't know why........ JoJaEpp (talk) 04:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, we're using 8.6 because that is the magnitude given by the USGS. If there are other equally good sources (seismological observatories rather than newspaper stories) we can include them if we have a source. Mikenorton (talk) 12:38, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

List of Earthquakes by Magnitude

It seems like it would be helpful to have a separate unified "List of earthquakes by magnitude" article that would be long and have something like 7.5 as the minimum requirement. Sfoske70 (talk) 18:18, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

With a minimum of 7.5 it would be very long (the NOAA database gives 928 earthquakes of that magnitude range). I would suggest a minimum of 8.0, although that would still be over 200 potentially. Mikenorton (talk) 18:33, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Magnitude of 1960 Chile Earthquake

USGS says it is 9.6? Pubserv (talk) 20:04, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

They give it as 9.5 [8]. Mikenorton (talk) 20:52, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

http://comcat.cr.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/centennial19600522191117#summary Pubserv (talk) 08:36, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the link. It appears that there are range of estimates from about 9.4 to 9.6, depending on the method used to derive the magnitude. The 9.6 was first reported by Pacheco & Sykes, based on the seismic moment estimated by Cifuentes & Silver 1989. This was then used in the Centennial catalogue of Engdahl & Villasenor in 2002. Bufe & Perkins (2005), describe these different estimates, choosing to use the 9.5 value originally estimated by Kanamori (1977) for their own purposes. Satake and Atwater (2007) report the 9.4-9.6 range that I mentioned above, but quote 9.5 as being the " widely accepted number". So I don't think that there's anything wrong with using the 9.5 value here, but we should probably have the full range in the earthquake article itself. Mikenorton (talk) 20:53, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Jordan

Why isn't there a list for Jordan's eartquakes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.34.163 (talk) 06:15, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Because Jordan is a country with few significant earthquakes the NGDC list just five in the last 4,000 years. Mikenorton (talk) 08:31, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

We lack list articles for earthquakes in all of the countries of the Middle East, but that's because no-one has created them yet. Mikenorton (talk) 08:40, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

USGS update

USGS recently updated their website to a new design, and they also updated all the earthquakes.

The earthquake updates include:

- Downgrading the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake from 9.1 to 9.0: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usp000dbed#general_summary - Upgrading the 1960 Chile earthquake from 9.5 to 9.6: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem879136#general_summary - Upgrading the 1964 Alaskan earthquake from 9.2 to 9.3: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem869809#general_summary - Upgrading the 1933 Japan earthquake from 8.3 to 8.5: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem905420#general_summary - Downgrading the 1906 Ecuador earthquake from 8.8 to 8.3: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem16957884#general_summary - Downgrading the 1952 Kamchatka earthquake from 9.0 to 8.9: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem893648#general_summary - Downgrading the 1922 Vallenar earthquake from 8.7 to 8.3: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem912062#general_summary - Upgrading the 1923 Kamchatka earthquake from 8.2 to 8.4: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem911271#general_summary - Upgrading the 1949 Queen Charlotte Islands from 8.1 to 8.2: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem896789#general_summary

The 1960 Concepcion foreshocks were updated to 8.1, 7.1 and 8.6: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem879106#general_summary http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem879127#general_summary http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/iscgem879134#general_summary — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.169.217.224 (talk) 03:37, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

After looking at a few of these, I noticed that the USGS is now using magnitudes, locations etc. from the ISC-GEM catalogue, replacing their own estimates, except for the 2004 Indian Ocean event, where the details still come from the USGS catalogue, although the ISC-GEM also has it as a 9.0. I think that the magnitudes used in this list article should be the same as those in the individual earthquake articles, so that's where the updating should take place. ISC-GEM is the latest recalculations for all these events, so that probably gives them precedence over other sources. That's a lot of earthquake articles to check out, but something that I had in mind to do. That the USGS is using the ISC-GEM results routinely for historical events will probably make it easier to convince others that this is the way forward. Thanks for mentioning it. Mikenorton (talk) 20:16, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

And now, the USGS has three entries for the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake from multiple sources:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/duputel122604a#general_summary 9.2 mww
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usp000dbed#general_summary 9.0 mw/mwc
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/atlas20041226005853#general_summary 9.0 m?

These are for the 2005 Sumatran earthquake:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usp000dk85#general_summary 8.6 mw/mwc
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/duputel200503281609a#general_summary 8.5 mww

And the 2010 Chile earthquake also got two entries, both M8.8
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/gcmt20100227063415#general_summary
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usp000h7rf#general_summary

The 1952 Kamchatka earthquake is not listed anymore.

Which of these could be the most trusted source? 194.169.217.124 (talk) 09:45, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

They're all reliable sources, but that's the problem with magnitudes, depths and locations for earthquakes, there's rarely just one estimate of all these parameters. As to the 1952 Kamchatka earthquake, it's still listed, but the page doesn't display for some reason [9]. For the 2004 Indian Ocean event, the USGS are reporting three separate estimates, based on information from seismologist Zacharie Duputel, Harvard and ATLAS (possibly Cornell?). The other two earthquakes have one estimate from the USGS and another from another catalogue, Duputel for the Sumatra event and GCMT (global centroid moment tensor catalogue) for the Chile event. So these are not necessarily USGS estimates, but also them reporting other's estimates. None of this helps us to come up with a single number for the purposes of either our individual earthquake articles, or this list article - the best we can do is to report the ranges for which we have sources. Mikenorton (talk) 12:13, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Nepal

Someone has changed Nepal's largest earthquake to the recent one, but I'm not sure this is quite right. The 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake has Mw=8.0 while the 2015 Nepal earthquake is currently listed at Mw=7.8. However, there's an estimate of Ms=8.2 for 2015, and Ms=8.1 for 1934. So after the USGS (or other agencies) have stabilized their estimates, someone should evaluate if the recent earthquake is larger than the 1934 one. Or perhaps we should consider making it possible to have more than one "largest" per country when there are two earthquakes that are pretty close in size. Argyriou (talk) 15:55, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out, all the estimates for the 1934 earthquake are larger - the most up to date recalculation in the ISC-GEM catalogue is Mw=8.0, so I've changed it back. The list of largest by country is getting bigger as more countries are included, giving two would in my view make it completely unwieldy. Mikenorton (talk) 21:15, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Mikenorton on this one. If the recent event is consistently upgraded in the future, the entry can be changed. Until then, we should stick with the 1934 earthquake, since most sources seem to agree it had a slightly higher magnitude. Elriana (talk) 20:45, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

On another note, why has the 2015 Nepal event been added as an 11th entry on the list of property damage by earthquake? The damage ($5 billion) is ~half that estimated for the entry above it. I find it hard to believe there are no other earthquakes with estimated damages between these two numbers. Is this list meant to be a top 10 list? If the recent Nepal event is included, it is only fair to include others, such as the 2004 Chūetsu earthquake (damage estimates range up to $32 billion), the 2001 Gujarat earthquake (>$5.5 billion), the 1990 Luzon Earthquake (~$7 billion), etc.. Elriana (talk) 20:45, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Elriana - if you have a good source for the damage for Chūetsu, please add it into the list in the appropriate place. I'm not certain we want to expand the property damage list beyond 10 (or 11), but if we do, we should definitely include those. Argyriou (talk) 21:51, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

A number of landslides were triggered by the 2004 Chuetsu earthquake and its aftershocks. Sorting out which damage estimates include landslide damage and which slides were triggered by the main quake is a non-trivial undertaking (especially since I do not read Japanese). Should the damage from landslides be included in the total used in this list? We seem to have been inconsistent with how damage caused by tsunamis is handled as well. The property damage for 2011 Tohoku includes the tsunami, but the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami is not mentioned at all. I know that the estimates for the Indian Ocean event(s) are more difficult to handle because of how widespread the effects were. But not listing it at all seems inconsistent.Elriana (talk) 19:33, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

FYI: Some sources now list the damages from the recent Nepal earthquake at ~$10 billion. I'm not changing the entry yet because the accepted value is likely to take some time to stabilize.Elriana (talk) 20:42, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

The Philippines and which scale to use for 'strongest' earthquake

The Philippines entry has changed a couple of times since I started following this list. But each new entry is no more justifiable than the last, not because they are wrong, but because they are all right in some way. The variety of magnitude scales used in evaluating historic earthquakes (and, to a lesser extent, the disagreement of different catalogs) makes comparisons between similarly sized events problematic no matter the country.

For example, the current entry (1948 Lady Caycay earthquake) is listed as 8.2 Ms, which is supportable. But the NGDC lists this event as the 5th largest Philippines earthquake, and the USGS has it as the 5th largest since 1900 (and listed at only 7.8, presumably Mw). Both sources list the 1918 and 1924 Mindanao events as larger, but the strongest two events differ between the catalogs (NGDC lists two 1897 events, while USGS excludes pre-1900 and lists 1972 and 1976 Mindanao).

Event	NGDC Rank	USGS Rank	Ms	Mw
1948 Lady Caycay earthquake	5	5 (tied with 3 others)	8.2	7.8
1976 Moro Gulf earthquake	10	4	7.9	7.9-8.0
1918 Celebes Sea (Mindanao:Cotabato)	3	1	8.3	8.3?
1924 Davao Gulf (Mindanao)	4	2 (tied)	8.3	8.0
1972 Mindanao (Davao)	42	2 (tied)	7.4	8.0
1897 Mindanao	1	-	8.7	-
1897 NW Mindanao (Dapitan)	2	-	8.6	-

Most of these do not have event pages, nor are they in the List of earthquakes in the Philippines, which should also be dealt with at some point. But for the purposes of this page, how should we handle such ambiguity? Are we listing only the strongest event with a wiki page? or should we stick to the M_w scale, ignoring events for which no M_w estimate exists? Or is there some clever way we could annotate our list to account for discrepancies between scales? Or would it be reasonable to put in multiple entries, presuming we can strictly define when such listings are appropriate?Elriana (talk) 15:42, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

To answer the last question, if there's a possibility that there are two different earthquakes which could be the "largest", I think it would be fair to put in both earthquakes, with a note explaining the issue. In the particular case, the Lady Caycay earthquake should not be the listed one, because even using M_s, it's not the largest. But since it's likely but not certain that one of the Mindanao earthquakes of 1897 was larger, we should list the 1918 earthquake and the larger of the 1897 ones, until someone finds an M_w estimate for the 1897 quakes. Definitely, we should not limit the entries to those earthquakes which have no separate article. Argyriou (talk) 17:37, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

For earthquakes after 1900 we have the ICS-GEM catalogue, which gives recalculated Mw values. In this case we have (with uncertainties):

• 1948 Lady Caycay 7.8 0.2
• 1924 Davao Gulf 8.01 0.34
• 1918 Mindano 8.3 0.4
• 1972 Davao 7.45 0.47
• 1976 Moro Gulf 7.96 0.1

For the Ms 8.7 1897 event on 21/9 Abe (1994), quoted in Hough 2013 [10], recalculated the event as 7.5 Ms. Overall I would go with the 1918 earthquake. Mikenorton (talk) 21:10, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Mikenorton, for the additional information. I agree that the 1918 event is the one list, particularly since the editors of this article/list use the Mw scale whenever possible (as we should). What little I can find on the 1897 events also seems to indicate lower Mw (7-8), despite higher surface wave magnitudes (Ms). Elriana (talk) 13:26, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Have you found anything better than Abe (1994)? I'm somewhat suspicious of that conversion because a) that's a big change in estimate b) Hough's paper is mostly about how a similar earlier Mw estimate is wrong, and c) Abe's estimate seems to be based primarily on instrumental data from 1897. So long as that's the only source for an Mw estimate, I don't think we should change it, but it seems not a very good estimate to me. Argyriou (talk) 20:20, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm still looking, but this abstract of a paper by Abe & Noguchi provides some explanation of why the magnitudes estimates were reduced. Mikenorton (talk) 10:48, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Ye et al 2012 use Abe's redeterminations of the 1897 events - see Figure 1. My feeling is that, if Hiroo Kanamori is happy with them, we should probably be so too. Mikenorton (talk) 11:16, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Finally, quoting Bautista & Bautista (from the Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology) in 2004 "The various works of Abe (1981, 1984, 1994) and Abe and Noguchi (1983) especially their redetermination of the magnitudes by Gutenberg and Richter covering the early 20th century period helped to improve the earthquake data in the Philippines including those during the 1892 to 1900 period." Mikenorton (talk) 11:34, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I've started 1897 Mindanao earthquakes. I've mentioned the change in estimated magnitudes using the Ye et al 2012 source. As I expand the article, I'll discuss the reasoning for the redetermination, as set out in the various Abe papers. BTW, I noticed that I stated several posts up in this thread that the Abe redetermination for the 21/9 event gave 7.5 Mw - that was wrong, it's 7.5 Ms - I misunderstood the Hough paper, but Ye et al make it clear. Mikenorton (talk) 15:21, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I've also started 1918 Celebes Sea earthquake, so that anyone can check the sources of the magnitudes for the two earthquakes. Mikenorton (talk) 17:28, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

References and Magnitudes

It is bad practice to change article information without changing the reference cited. In particular, some recent edit attempts have altered event magnitudes without changing the reference cited for that event. Since most of these references have not altered (particularly the books and journal articles), there is no way a different magnitude is supported by the same citation. Please, do not change event magnitudes without a (new) reference. In the cases of events without references on this page, the reference is usually listed on the individual event page. Changing magnitudes here without changing the magnitude on the individual page is also a problem, since encyclopedias should be as self-consistent as possible.

Multiple individuals have spent a fair amount of time making the event magnitudes in this list as self-consistent as we are able. If you feel that a different scheme is justified, or that mistakes have been made, please discuss that here before making sweeping changes to the list itself.Elriana (talk) 13:27, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Stronger Quake in Finland and Fake Quake in Norway

In the list "strongest Quakes by Country" is the strongest Quake in Finland given by M3.5. But there are Reports of an M4,7 Quake in 1898 in Tornio. http://www.emidius.eu/ahead/main/info/?eqid=95198

In the same list, the strongest quake in Norway is given with M6,2 in Svalbad, but without a query and USGS didnt confirmed it. The strongest quake in Norway in the USGS archive is M6,1 (21 February 2008) or M6,7 (20 July 1992). Please correct it.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#%7B%22feed%22%3A%221459263890844%22%2C%22search%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A%221459263890844%22%2C%22name%22%3A%22Search%20Results%22%2C%22isSearch%22%3Atrue%2C%22params%22%3A%7B%22starttime%22%3A%221016-03-22%2000%3A00%3A00%22%2C%22endtime%22%3A%222016-03-29%2023%3A59%3A59%22%2C%22maxlatitude%22%3A81.888%2C%22minlatitude%22%3A74.24%2C%22maxlongitude%22%3A42.715%2C%22minlongitude%22%3A-0.879%2C%22minmagnitude%22%3A5.5%2C%22orderby%22%3A%22time%22%7D%7D%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22autoUpdate%22%3Afalse%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3Atrue%2C%22timeZone%22%3A%22utc%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B68.39918004344189%2C-17.666015625%5D%2C%5B81.72318761821157%2C74.267578125%5D%5D%2C%22overlays%22%3A%7B%22plates%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22viewModes%22%3A%7B%22help%22%3Afalse%2C%22list%22%3Atrue%2C%22map%22%3Atrue%2C%22settings%22%3Afalse%7D%7D (only for Svalbard, there arent strong quakes in Mainland Norway)

217.24.225.128 (talk) 15:09, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Strongest quakes by country

So far I have examined three countries that either had no citation, or oblique citation, and all three were incorrect - namely: Poland, Cuba and Denmark. I have replaced those entries with the stronger quakes. The Cuba entry had listed its deadliest quake as its strongest. The other two listings were just plain smaller quakes. I suspect that this is more of a problem for countries that do not have an article "List of earthquakes in X-country", but again Cuba does have a List of earthquakes in Cuba article, and for countries with less seismic activity. I'll check a few more to see if the errors really are that rampant (as suggested by many of the enries above). If the errors are so rampant, I will post a checklist here to mark off countires that have been thoroughly checked. --Bejnar (talk) 20:13, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Good catch! I checked the Malaysia entry and changed it to the largest event in the USGS interactive catalog (I know this is not the most exhaustive list, but it's good back to the start of instrumentation for this area). My guess is that people are adding the largest event they can find or think of, rather than doing a search in one of the comprehensive databases, which tend to be less public-user-friendly. I seem to remember the USGS website having a list of largest EQ by country at some point, but that doesn't appear to exist now. Elriana (talk) 01:03, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

The Vietnam entry is not cited, and the only event I can find in the catalogs near the listed size is the 6.7 from 1935. Vietnam's Institute for Geophysics seems to have a report listing the 1983 event at 6.7, and the 1935 event at 6.8, but I can't confirm that anywhere but in their online report (http://idm.gov.vn/nguon_luc/Xuat_ban/2008/b31-32/b220.htm). Best practice would be to reference the sources they claim to use directly, but I can't find entries with those magnitudes.Elriana (talk) 01:49, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Two issues:

1) @Loran33 has been adding a number of entries, which is good. But they are based on a single source website (http://earthquaketrack.com). I don't mind these entries for countries which were previously not in the list, but a couple of them disagree with other sources and other wikipedia articles. Also, the website does not include events before 1900. That's reasonable, since data before then is extremely patchy, but it does risk omitting historical events. Just how much weight do we want to give a website with no obvious affiliation and a clipped data set?

Personally, when that website includes a link to the USGS (or equivalent official seismological organization) entry for a given quake, I think the original source should also be cited. When no such link is available, I would be a tad more skeptical of the list results. Some effort should also be made to determine if a country has any accounts of pre-1900 seismicity.

2) I reverted the Bolivia entry, since the previous entry was larger than the new one, and large enough that the earthquake spanned a huge geographic region. But it brings up some interesting issues. The 1877 Iquique earthquake was centered in a region that was then in the middle of a border dispute between Bolivia and Chile. Are we limiting our earthquakes to those within the modern borders of a specific country? I think we must. But what about very large quakes very close to a border? In some cases, the earthquake rupture area may span multiple countries, and the shaking definitely crosses those borders, but the epicenter is only in one of them. Do we confine our evaluation to epicenters within a country's geographic borders, or do we include events that ruptured into that country as well?

Elriana (talk) 19:05, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think we should be using earthquaketrack (not an authority). If the USGS is their source, we should drop the middleman for simplicity. There was no explanation for some of the other changes that Loran33 made, and I did restore a small bit of detail that was removed. Dawnseeker2000 00:15, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree with both of you. Wykx (talk) 07:30, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Earthquakes by country. What counts as "in" a country?

Someone changed the magnitude for the very recent earthquake in South Korea (from the Mw to the Ms), and I changed it back since there is an Mw estimate. However, looking at it, there appear to have been some larger earthquakes offshore in the historical record. How close to land should an earthquake be to be considered in a country? (Assuming that the epicenter is closer to that country than to any other.) In the instant case, the earthquake this month was on land, and is Mw = 5.4. There's a 5.8 near offshore, and a 6.2 further offshore, but both are closer to South Korea than to North Korea or Japan. Should we use either of those as South Korea's largest earthquake? Argyriou (talk) 15:03, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

"In" a country is at maximum inside Territorial waters, it means 12 nautical miles (22.2 km; 13.8 mi). Wykx (talk) 18:53, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Wykx that inside the Territorial waters is a solid definition. I would add the caveat, however, that if an earthquake occurs in the subduction zone parallel to and associated with a particular country's coastline, and it has a large impact on that country, I would be willing to associate the earthquake with that country even if the epicenter is beyond the 12 nautical miles cutoff. For large subduction zone earthquakes, the slip area is also fairly large, and most of that is likely to be within territorial waters, even if the epicenter manages not to be. I do not think there are many places where this could possibly apply, since most subduction trenches seem to be within the territorial waters of their associated countries. But I want to acknowledge the possibility. Elriana (talk) 18:34, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami was 70 km off the coast of Japan and the 1906 Ecuador–Colombia earthquake was at least that far off the coasts of both Ecuador and Colombia, which is why it's listed as the largest earthquake in both countries (correctly in my view), so there needs to be some slack in this. Mikenorton (talk) 21:48, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

A country's EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) extends up to 200 nautical miles (370.4 km; 230.2 mi) from the territorial sea baseline. We could potentially base our classification on this. However, some earthquakes could occur within a country's EEZ without having any significant effect on that country or being particularly related to the geology of the nearest landmass (I'm thinking about assorted Pacific islands). So some caveats might still be in order if we use the EEZ's as our borders. Elriana (talk) 20:17, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

EEZ is not part of the territory. Wykx (talk) 08:22, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I realize that the EEZ is not a country's 'territory', but we are not discussing who controls a given piece of ocean. We are trying to determine how to classify whether a given earthquake occurred in a particular country. No one is going to argue that the 2011 Tohoku earthquake should be excluded from the list for Japan, but the epicenter and most of the actual rupture area were outside of Japan's territorial waters. For large earthquakes, including events within a country's EEZ could make sense.Elriana (talk) 01:23, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually no, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake affected Japan but the epicenter was certainly not in Japan. Wykx (talk) 19:47, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

So, by your definition, most subduction zone earthquakes are orphans, and should not be assigned to any country. Considering the massive economic and societal impacts of subduction zone earthquakes, that seems problematic. We name these events based on the countries and towns/cities that are nearest to them. The general public and news media associate these earthquakes with a specific country. To *not* associate the nearby subduction events with the countries in this list would be misleading, at best. Elriana (talk) 19:17, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

They happen in oceans or seas which are international waters. If it associated to a country, this is by effects but not by location. We need to stick on facts. If a quake happens in a country 1 near the border of country 2 but affects mostly country 2 would we say it happens in country 2? No. Wykx (talk) 19:37, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

I am about to revert the edit regarding the largest earthquake in Iraq. We can't be changing this for an earthquake epicentre with a real uncertainty that is so close to the border. What is wrong with having it in both countries, if it's that close to the border? Mikenorton (talk) 21:55, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Epicenter inside the territory of the country seems reasonnable. For example many Iran quakes have affected Iraq but they can be counted only in one country, in Iran. Wykx (talk) 22:05, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 12 external links on Lists of earthquakes. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160414014457/http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/mag8/magnitude8_1900_date.php to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/mag8/magnitude8_1900_date.php
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090825173729/http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/world/events/1952_11_04.php to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/world/events/1952_11_04.php
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110510044742/http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/mag8/magnitude8_1900_mag.php to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/mag8/magnitude8_1900_mag.php
• Corrected formatting/usage for https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/results?bt_0=1000&st_0=2016&type_17=EXACT&query_17=90&op_12=eq&v_12=CUBA&type_12=Or&query_14=None%20Selected&type_3=Like&type_11=Exact&type_16=Exact&display_look=1&t=101650&s=1&submit_all=Search%20Database
• Corrected formatting/usage for http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usp000h7fy
• Corrected formatting/usage for http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usp0001xcb
• Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/47459/top-5-most-expensive-natural-d.asp
• Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fgw-japan-quake-world-bank-20110322%2C0%2C3799976.story
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090901233953/http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/world/most_destructive.php to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/world/most_destructive.php
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130605122458/http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/most_destructive.php to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/most_destructive.php
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090510025543/http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/world/historical_mag_big.php to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/world/historical_mag_big.php
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101107224716/http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/10_largest_world.php to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/10_largest_world.php

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 05:02, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

On formating scale labels and table headers

Quite likely you all know that there are multiple scales for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes, which vary somewhat in their valuation, and therefore it is often important to identify the scale used for an earthquake's magnitude. I have been preparing a template (Template:M)) for identifying and tracking the use of these scales, and to provide easy and uniform formatting of the scale labels. There are two points on which I would like to hear if there are any preferences.

First point: Should the labels for the various magnitude scales – such as M_L, M_w, M_s, mB, mb, mb_Lg, etc. – be italicized, or not? Note: these are not symbols for the quantity; these are labels for the scales, analogous to the use of "F" and "C" for the temperature scales. There is no scientific significance to using italics or not. Some journals and agencies use italics, some do not; it is merely a matter of preferred style. A secondary point: should italicization (if applied) also apply to the subscripts? The argument against is that subscripts, being smaller, are little less legible, and italics might be confusing.

Second point: the various lists (tables) of earthquakes typically list the magnitudes in a column labelled "M", but without explaining what that is. As most WP editors neither explain their table headers nor wikilink them, I am thinking of offering an option to automatically wikilink that. The question is: would "Earthquake magnitude" be acceptable as a standard header? (I believe "Mag.", referring to "magnitude" generally, is preferable to "M", which suggests a particular magnitude scale.) ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:49, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

@Mikenorton, Elriana, GeoWriter, Materialscientist, Ceranthor, Volcanoguy, and Gorthian: If you're all fine with leaving these matters up to me, very well, but I don't want anyone complaining they weren't consulted. Note that I have also presented the first point at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Formatting of earthquake magnitude scales. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:07, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

I believe I've usually seen the scales italicized, but I don't have a strong preference either way. The second part seems fine to me. ceranthor 22:16, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:50, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

1) I typically do not italicize magnitude scale labels. It is unnecessary, and I think it best to default to the simplest possible formatting. But in wikipedia articles, I do default to wikilinking the labels to the page for that particular scale, especially if that label is in a column or list heading.

2) The header for a list/column of magnitudes should be "Mag." or "Magnitude" with some indication as to the default scale. For example: "Magnitude (M_w)". "M" is essentially meaningless, and a label (e.g., "M_w") on its own is opaque to non-experts.

Elriana (talk) 17:15, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I am of the same opinion, and anticipate removing the italicization. I think you'll like Template:M, as it does all that you describe. Well, I still have to write a couple of paragraphs at Seismic scale to link to, but they are coming. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk)

 Done Labels produced by {{M}} are now non-italic. I have also added a "mag" option for tables that produces "Mag.".

I still have details of documentation to complete, but the template is ready for general use. You all try it out and let me know how you like it, and if you find any problems. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:29, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Why not use the authoritative source(s)?

@Wykx: among the other details this edit of yours replaced a USGS sourced item (from https://earthquake.usgs.gov) to https://earthquaketrack.com. Why? Why not use the official and authoritative source? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:46, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

This was a reversion to the previous edit because the new link wasn't concerning Iraq. You're welcome to replace by a USGS source provided it concerns Iraq. Wykx (talk) 07:23, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I just realized you weren't replacing the USGS sourced entry, but reverting to an older entry. Okay.

But I still raise the same question for everyone: why not use the official and authoritative sources? Why not mandate use of the USGS and ISC? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:36, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

ISC links with Template:EQ-isc-link

I have created a template, {{EQ-isc-link}}, to make it nearly trivial to add links to the International Seismological Centre (ISC) – the ultimate authority on the magnitudes and other technical details of the world's notable earthquakes – and to the event pages corresponding to specific quakes ("events"). These event pages are very rich resources; check out this example for the Loma Prieta quake:

• The International Seismological Centre has a bibliography and/or authoritative data for this event.

An event id is required, but that is very easy to obtain: the event pages are listed chronologically at the ISC event index (or the IRIS mirror). Just pop the id into the template, and there you are. The ISC is typically six months or a year behind; using a zero for the event id adds the article to a tracking category for follow-up.

The USGS "Latest earthquakes", "Preliminary Determination of Epicenters", and "Past 30 days" lists are useful for the initial sourcing of magnitude and epicenter, and even damage, But note: those are all preliminary. Once the ISC assesses all the data and posts their estimates, all other sources are out-of-date. We should be using the ISC as the preferred and authoritative source. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:51, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Lists of earthquakes. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Corrected formatting/usage for https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/results?bt_0=1000&st_0=2016&type_17=EXACT&query_17=90&op_12=eq&v_12=CUBA&type_12=Or&query_14=None+Selected&type_3=Like&type_11=Exact&type_16=Exact&display_look=1&t=101650&s=1&submit_all=Search+Database
• Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fgw-japan-quake-world-bank-20110322,0,3799976.story
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110223092531/http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/3468575g.html to http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/3468575g.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120830094558/http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/recent_quakes.html to http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/recent_quakes.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 15:00, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Richter scale popular nonsense spread by wikipedia

So EN-WP does aggressively insist on linking the Richter scale to high magnitude determination. Its unscientific and makes no sense at all, but popular media set the facts. The not yet vandalized article still tells everyone that Richter magnitude scale is obsolete since ~40(!) years. But for EN-WP it is "factual information" .

So, welcome in the Wikipedia where alternative facts have their home. That will encourage stupid people to find their playground. But the others will not take part in that game. --Itu (talk) 05:27, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I think you might be reading that sentence wrong. Dawnseeker2000 05:47, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

First, over the last decade, more and more media articles have been using the word "magnitude" to describe an earthquake and *not* mentioning the Richter scale. Written articles are better about this than video news, presumably because they get more opportunity for editing.

Second, regardless of what the media does, anyone who went to school more than 20 years ago was taught about the Richter scale. It's a memorable name, and a lot of people remember it. A differentiation should be made in this article between Richter Magnitude and Moment Magnitude. BUT most people neither know the technical difference nor need to. They just need to know that there is a consistent modern scale that is currently used and that it is conceptually similar to the Richter Scale. Whether it is the Richter Scale or not is irrelevant to most people. Direct them to the Seismic magnitude scales article for the details, and avoid getting lost in the details here.

I would recommend rephrasing to avoid the words "popular media" because the media is not at all consistent about this. Perhaps say something like: "Listed below are all known earthquakes with an estimated magnitude of 8.5 or above on the Moment magnitude scale (which has replaced the Richter magnitude scale in modern seismology)."

Let's settle this here instead of playing the edit war game on the actual article? Elriana (talk) 21:26, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Looks like better wording. Mikenorton (talk) 21:30, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Good work. I like it as well. Dawnseeker2000 00:30, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, there is no "Richter magnitude scale", not even in pre-modern seismology. As near as I can make out that name came out of the press (back in the 1930's and later) referring to Richter's magnitude scale, which became the local magnitude (M_L). Which is still used for events under M 4.0 (and some other uses).

As to M 4+ events as reported by – and how else can this be said? – the popular (non-technical?) media, "Richter scale" is still widely used. (Google shows hundreds of hits in just the last month.) The problem I see is that with increasing mention of moment magnitude alert readers might wonder about this seeming use of two different scales, which warrants some brief explanation of the situation. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:53, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

(ec) Elriana, yes thats a much better wording, because at least its factual true. Its not very smart, because its not a central location here to give the information about obsoleteness of richter scale (for at least high magnitude quakes). I do not see any need to mention Richter at all (except a rare case when an agency would actually communicate it). I do not understand why people, in case they read just "$number magnitude" may expect there is a scale that is not conceptually similar to the Richter Scale(what is not that wrong) because no one ever said such. "Magnitude" is not reading as an alternative scale at all.

But at least its true to tell that Richter scale is replaced, and it may be help that people, and hopefully media, forget about that useless phrase "Richter scale". It is not the mission of an serious encylopedia to let people read what they may have heard an read times before, when it is literally untrue + useless, even if they may, in some strange way, be addicted to hear and tell about "Richter scale" in addition to an magnitude number ... --Itu (talk) 01:05, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I made the change. Elriana's wording is pretty spiffy (though both achieve nearly the same goal). Feel free to revert, expand, change, etc. Dawnseeker2000 20:24, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

How about we put the clarification of "magnitude" in a footnote? At that point in the text "magnitude" is not being used for any specific value, so the exact scale referred to does not make that much difference. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:06, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

On the other hand, with more than 2,000 views per day, the prominent location in this article's text is probably our best opportunity to help correct the misunderstanding. Dawnseeker2000 19:27, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

True, and an opportunity not to be squandered lightly. And I am probably over-hopeful that most readers will read a note. However, I am still greatly irked by any mention of "Richter magnitude scale" as a distinct scale. "[I]n modern seismology" (as the article currently reads), there neither is, nor has been, any such scale. That term is the creation of reporters referring to Richter's scale, which is the Local magnitude scale.

The problem is that much "popular" ("non-technical"?) reporting still refers to "Richter magnitude", so having mentioned moment magnitude we need to resolve this apparent discrepancy. I think the simplest way is to follow "moment magnitude scale" with (in parentheses) "often called the Richer magnitude". Or similar, the key points being that "Richter" is an appellation, not a scale, and to steer clear of ambiguous and inaccurate notion that M_L  has been "replaced". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:26, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

NO, media do not call the moment magnitude "Richter scale". They are fully ignoring any scale-specification that may in fact ship with the number and just then adding "Richter scale" because it's their common tradition to what they are addicted. There is no evidence that the "Richter scale"-callers ever even tried to deal with scales that factually belongs to given numbers. --Itu (talk) 06:54, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

"NO"?? Itu, you are speaking nonsense. As a matter of demonstrable fact, the "media" (as sampled using Google News) DO 'call the moment magnitude "Richter scale".' Check it yourself: go to Google News and search for "earthquake richter scale". I get thousands of hits. What do you get? Certainly enough to demonstrate that at least some of the "media" use "Richter scale" to refer to an earthquake's moment magnitude.

You are in error in some other regards, but I (and likely others) have refrained from mentioning them because of a very large problem: your histrionics (aka, drama). This is not helpful. E.g., implying that what is essentially a minor content dispute will result "in the Wikipedia where alternative facts have their home. That will encourage stupid people ..." is way out of proportion. It is absurd. Such exaggeration deters other editors from wanting to deal with you. Likewise with the tone of some of your edit summaries. (E.g.: characterizing the edits you reverted as "unscientific crap" and "blatant crap".)

Similarly, the very title you selected for this section – "Richter scale popular nonsense spread by wikipedia" — is non-neutral, even inflammatory. The problem is not simply a violation of the WP:Talk page guidelines (see WP:TALKNEW), it shows that you have already set your opinion, and are more inclined to engage in histrionics than in discussion. Even if we should agree on "Richter scale popular nonsense", the tenor of your edits is to suppress any attempt to address that "nonsense".

Your comments are factually wrong in various respects, but there is little to be gained in trying to discuss them (besides being a big waste of time) when you are being so WP:DRAMAtic. If you continue in this mode I believe ANI should be the next step. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:01, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

So, the media say "Richter scale" when in fact in most cases "moment magnitude" would be right. So, now your conclusion is they must mean "moment magnitude" when they say "Richter scale". What you call "demonstrable fact", thats obviously what is called cum hoc ergo propter hoc.

I think everything is said now and i can not hinder you believing something else.

If you go to the court, don't forget who started to be aggressive. You reap what you sow. Don't complain. --Itu (talk) 17:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

It's alright. I don't think anything was meant by that edit summary. I wouldn't take offense. It just means "lacking awareness". Let's just call this discussion as complete with the article being improved with the refined wording and call it good. Dawnseeker2000 19:39, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't see this as "alright". On one hand, I am against this "replaced by" language for being quite misleading. On the other hand, Itu's disruptive histrionics rather impairs the prospect of a calm, useful discussion. One approach would be to just ignore him, but based on his past behavior that would probably lead to an edit war. Not "alright". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:05, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Nice to see that media learning their lessons: German newspaper "World" tells earthquakes as "strength of 6.4". No more Richter-phantom (and not even needing "magnitude"). --Itu (talk) 13:33, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Re "magnitude" details

The article currently refers to "earthquakes with an estimated magnitude of 8.5 or above on the moment magnitude scale (which has replaced the Richter magnitude scale in modern seismology)." After three weeks I still find this objectionable, as it reinforces a muddled view of "Richter magnitude". Dawnseeker2000 has previously suggested that the text here "is probably our best opportunity to help correct the misunderstanding." Indeed, and I previously said it should not be squandered lightly. But this text does not do that.

In trying to find a better formulation I have come around to a position that this "Richter misunderstanding" is not a "wrong" that should be corrected here. I therefore propose the following: that in this text we drop mention of specific scales, reverting back to the previous text which said only "magnitude" without qualification, but making the change previously suggested by Elriana that "magnitude" be wikilinked to Seismic magnitude scales. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:30, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

No objections being raised, I am proceeding with that this change. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:30, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't know how others feel, but I don't feel particularly strongly about this, though I still think that if there's an improvement to be made in the choice of words, this high traffic list is probably the place to do it. I'm still in a mode where writing is not coming all that naturally and have still been relying heavily on AWB to make an impact. So, no objection from me, and I won't stand in the way, but am interested in what some of the other heavy hitters might have to say. Dawnseeker2000 18:47, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

My worry is that we will end up with a list where the magnitudes are not listed on a consistent scale. The reason for specifying the Moment Magnitude scale is that, in the past, people have used magnitudes from other scales as inclusion criteria without understanding what they are doing (or why their edits are reverted). This is a list, and as such, the inclusion criteria should be explicit. Linking to the set of magnitude scales does *not* specify what scale is actually used for inclusion. Elriana (talk) 20:07, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

I think I understand your point. Which is actually two points. First is the criteria for inclusion; I am not aware that this as been explicitly and definitely stated. (And I agree it should be.) In regards of "largest", Mw often is not the best measure of an earthquake's significance to human society (e.g., see here), and it might be preferable to use a more nuanced criterion than simply "Mw".

Your second point, on having a consistent basis of comparison, goes beyond inclusion criteria; readers also need a consistent scale. (Which also affects sorting.) Unfortunately, we probably can't be as nuanced with the readers as with editors. E.g., if inclusion is on the basis of (say) M_e, or even extent of damage, sorting the table by Mw might lead to "smaller" quakes having greater damage. Perhaps that could be a teaching opportunity, perhaps we could sort the table by damage, I don't know.

As to the current text: I wasn't trying to say that 8.5 on any scale suffices for inclusion, I was making a general characterization for the reader, while avoiding making a specific statement that might not be true. When we have definite criteria we can state that (or not). Without knowing the actual and stated criteria for inclusion I think it best to stay with generic "magnitude". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:37, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Notification of proposals to modify 'Infobox earthquake'

Please note that I made two proposals at Template talk:Infobox earthquake for how date and time is handled, and for adding links to the ISC and ANSS. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:31, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Are lists of aftershocks ever notable?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Are lists of aftershocks ever notable?

After a major earthquake it is normal to have many aftershocks. For several days after the largest event (which is identified as the "main shock") these may be nearly as big, then steadily decrease in size in the following months. (See Omori's law and Gutenberg-Richter law.) In some cases a large earthquake is followed by an aftershock large enough to cause substantial damage to structures already weakened by the main shock, and such cases may be sufficiently notable to mention in article. However, of the hundreds of aftershocks that might be recorded in the two months following a large earthquake, it is rare that even one of them is in any way distinguished from all the rest. (With the exception of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake.) I am not aware of any set of aftershocks that is in anyway notable, unless it was for being selected for special study. In the three "Lists of" articles I have examined – List of 2008 Sichuan earthquake aftershocks, List of foreshocks and aftershocks of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, and List of aftershocks of April 2015 Nepal earthquake – and some dozen articles that contain lists of aftershocks, I have seen no explanation of why any these are notable. In most cases there is no indication of the selection criteria used, and often consist of only M 3 or 4 earthquakes that many people experiencing them would not notice.

Any showing of notability being notably absent, and such lists having no evident purpose, value, nor interest, why do we have them? A map of aftershocks above a significant magnitude (5?), or even a plot of magnitudes over time, might be of interest, but where is the value or interest in a list of unnotable, uninteresting aftershocks? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:29, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this question. I think that it strikes at the root of the problem that I see with some of our stand-alone earthquake lists. I started bringing this up about two years ago, but was met with some resistance. I don't think we need the lists of aftershocks. The reason, which parallels the problems in the other lists, is that what that type of content is really trying to (re)produce is that of an earthquake catalog. We'll never be able to compete with a better earthquake catalog than is already available to everyone with an internet connection. What we can do though is create some very encyclopedic articles about individual events (the content in the earthquake articles that we create here isn't really available to the masses – I consider what we do a service to those that wouldn't otherwise have the means to access some of the finer details). We can also make lists about notable events, while adhering as close as possible to WP:CSC (thank you MikeNorton) and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Dawnseeker2000 00:02, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

They should definitely go - the main reason these articles were spun off was that the tables were taking up too much space in the original earthquake articles. The solution adopted for the 2018 Papua New Guinea earthquake seems to me to be a good one, a scrollable table that doesn't take up much space. How easy it would be to put these tables back into their original articles is another matter.

As to our list of earthquakes by country, there is a problem with lower seismicity countries, where every earthquake is commented on in the media and by the relevant geological survey and scientific papers get written even for M4 (and lower) events. The worst case I know of is list of earthquakes in the British Isles - in many ways it approaches the second kind of list mentioned in WP:CSC, which is Short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group, but that is supposed to be restricted to a total size of about 32k and it's currently 49.8k and growing. I should probably mock up a version of that list using the strict notability criteria to open a discussion - at least it will be short. Thanks for raising this. Mikenorton (talk) 11:00, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I've opened a discussion - we'll see how that goes. Mikenorton (talk)

Agreed, we should not be tryng to produce catalogs. The nature of an encyclopedia is not a detailed assemblage of data, but a summary of our understanding. For aftershocks a graphic or two suffices.

I don't think scrollable or collapsible tables are helpful here. (Also seen at 2017 Chiapas earthquake.) The lists themselves (as far as I can see) are non-notable, and it is irrelevant how they are packaged.

I am going to open an RfC to get more comment. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:33, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Are lists of earthquake aftershocks ever notable?

Are lists of earthquake aftershocks ever notable? While, on rare occasions, individual aftershocks (or foreshocks) might be notable, for various reasons raised in the preceeding discussion it appears that lists of aftershocks (and foreshocks), whether stand-alone or within an article, are not notable. Further comment is requested. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:35, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

@JL 09, Lilac Soul, PichPich, Pontificalibus, and Mandsford: you all were involved in a related discussion. Any comments for here? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:42, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

And a belated ping to @Pichpich. Sorry about that. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:52, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I think in certain occasions they are if they are covered by reliable sources, such as List of foreshocks and aftershocks of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. In that particular case, the whole phenomenon is notable and covered extensively in news, articles etc. --Ita140188 (talk) 07:32, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't belive that merely "covered by reliable sources" makes anything notable. That is a minimal requirement, not a sufficient condition. As an example: the ISC – the premier reliable source for global seismicity – "covers" nearly every seismic event since 1900, but that does make any event notable. Similarly for the USGS-ANSS catalog. Mere mention does not establish notability.

As to newspapers and similar non-technical media: while I maintain they are generally not reliable sources regarding earthquakes, I do allow that mention of any earthquake, or earthquake swarm, in a newspaper could be taken as possible indication of notability in the region of that source. Thus, the Japanese sources that the Tōhoku aftershock list relies on might establish a local (or regional/national) notability. But several problems with this view. Primarily, it does not show significance "by the world at large" (WP:Notability nutshell). Also, because the principal sources are all in Japanese it is not clear – and the article does not explain – how this set of aftershocks is more notable than any other sequence of aftershocks. You say "the whole phenomenon is notable", but is that on any basis other than being "covered" in various news reports? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:02, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• Just follow the sources. If reporting of the overall event gives a distinct notice to an aftershock, then it was notable. Seems unlikely, but if it is noted then it is noted. Whether that was due to a particular result of the further shaking, or some unusual nature of the aftershock itself or a cultural attitude might be mentioned as why it was noted. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 11:47, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

  If particular aftershocks are notable, fine, mention them. But note, first, that (as I said before) the ISC – the most reliable source for global seismicity – "gives a distinct notice" to (i.e., catalogs) hundreds of aftershocks (down to about, off-hand, M 4), which in no way qualify as adequately notable for inclusion in WP. Second, please note that the question here is not individual aftershocks, but lists of aftershocks. I agree with you that the basis of such notablility need not be merely seismic, but could be cultural, or historical. But I have yet to see any sequence of aftershocks that are notable in such a regard. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:26, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

  Are we talking in general or for specific cases? Because I think this is a question of specific cases. in List of foreshocks and aftershocks of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake all earthquakes listed are over M 6. Some caused deaths. This list is obviously notable. And the events make sense in the broader context of the Tohoku Earthquake. You can find plenty of international independent and non-technical/database sources of these events, and they all contextualize them as aftershocks of the main earthquake. --Ita140188 (talk) 01:45, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

  How do you get "obviously notable"? As to being found in a database: did you read my prior comment? That various sources "contextualize" (huh?) the Tohoku aftershocks as .. aftershocks? – what does that mean? Are you suggesting that the notability of an earthquake implicitly extends to the aftershocks? I find that absurd.

  I view this discussion as general. But showing any specific list of aftershocks to be notable would disprove the notion that no such list is notable, and might suggest bases of notability broadly applicable to such lists. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:25, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

  I think I haven't been clear. I mean those quakes are found in sources that are not merely databases or technical listings, but also newspapers, journals, books etc. They are talking about the specific aftershocks and they characterize them as such (not independent quakes). --Ita140188 (talk) 03:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

  Then we agree that mention in a catalog or database does not amount to notability. I suggest this should also apply to any subset of a catalog selected on the basis of location, time range, and minimum magnitude, lacking any other criterion of notability. Such a criterion might be (as Mike suggests further on) a sequence of aftershocks (or any sequence of quakes) that is the subject of multiple scientific papers, but I have to see that.

  I grant that some notability of an aftershock, characterized as such, is demonstrated by mention in various news sources. (And here I would point out that the ISC provides event bibliographies that can demonstrate scientific notability.) Where an event is not notable enough to have its own article, the notability derives from the main event, and the proper place for mentioning the aftershock is in the article of the main event. Where there are several notable aftershocks I would allow the possibility of a list. But mere mention in a newspaper (or even worse, a neighborhood blog) is a pretty low standard; I think there needs to be higher standard. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:32, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

• For most earthquakes, such list articles are unnecessary and have no inherent notability to support their existence. If a large earthquake has a lot of damaging aftershocks/foreshocks then such a list may have a point. However, every entry into such a list should meet the notability standard for standalone articles. Maybe there will be an earthquake whose aftershock sequence is so unusual that scientific papers get written about it, but that would potentially justify an article about the sequence, not just a list. Mikenorton (talk) 12:19, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
• Thank you for inviting me to participate in the discussion. There are some cases where the aftershock actually causes more deaths than the original intense quake, or comes several days after the initial cataclysm. Arguably, there's a significance to earthquakes that are accompanied by a powerful aftershock, though such a list should be limited to those where there are two or more 7.0 magnitude events. Mandsford 16:32, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

  Even without "more deaths than the original", aftershocks can be pretty significant. A prime example would be the M 7.2 Kodari event of 2015-05-12, quite notable itself, even though considered by some to be an aftershock of the M 7.9 Ghorka (Nepal) event two weeks earlier. But are the other two dozen M 5 events at List of aftershocks of April 2015 Nepal earthquake really notable enough for inclusion? If not, then we have a list of one item. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:38, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

• List of foreshocks and aftershocks of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake looks reasonable. To quote the page " 60 aftershocks being over magnitude 6.0 and three over magnitude 7.0". Looking at a Google News search I'm seeing a lot of news coverage explicitly about the aftershocks. I'll also note that the article is still getting more than 40 pageviews per day - seven years later.
  
  On the other hand, aftershocks of most other quakes are not going to be independently notable. In most cases aftershocks probably don't warrant detailed coverage within the article on the main quake. Geological catalogs may be excellent sources for authoritative comprehensive and authoritative information, however indiscriminate catalogs are worthless as a basis to include the information. We do not include WP:INDISCRIMINATE details. There has to be meaningful news or other discriminate ReliableSource discussion of aftershocks to warrant mentioning them in an article. And even then, in most cases it should probably be summarized in a few sentences providing meaningful context. An actual list of aftershocks should be reserved for cases where they were particularly significant in (discriminate) ReliableSources, and should be limited to the most significant events. But to reiterate, in most cases I expect such lists would be WP:INDISCRIMINATE detail. Alsee (talk) 11:51, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
• Sometimes but generally no Unless RS are giving significant coverage to the foreshocks and aftershocks (at least as much coverage as the major earthquake), there's no need to spin off a separate article listing them. Generally I think they'd be included in the main earthquake event article as having occurred, and perhaps noting the highest magnitude/duration along with how many days the fore- and aftershocks continued to occur (whatever the RS are saying about them, really). Even then, a detailed list in the article is unnecessary and UNDUE. Ca2james (talk) 16:00, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

In reviewing this discussion: my sense is that "generally no" is the general sentiment, but allowing the possibility of exceptions. As to possible cases Alsee says List of foreshocks and aftershocks of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake "looks reasonable", and Mandsford suggests some unspecified cases "where the aftershock actually causes more deaths than the original intense quake". But I question the notability of the former, and lacking any other specifics I think we have no examples of notable lists of fore/aftershocks.

Would everyone be agreeable to a finding that: lists of earthquake fore- and after-shocks (as stand-alone articles) are generally indiscriminate collections of detail and not notable, unless the list itself is notable? And that such lists are discouraged unless a strong case is made? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:41, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

• Rarely I agree with Alsee, and they put it well. These lists should be like List of foreshocks and aftershocks of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, showing impact of these aftershocks and not like List of aftershocks of April 2015 Nepal earthquake which goes out of it's way to say how 'mundane' those aftershocks were. Though I admit I did like having a nerdy look at the data. Nessie (talk) 13:26, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

"Nerdy look at the data"? Perhaps that was via the ISC links, which I added as a trial of the new templates. (I was going to add them to the Tōhoku list, but I couldn't deal with all the citations in Japanese.) I suspect the major aftershocks in Nepal were just as notable to the populations affected as the ones in Japan, but Nepal list seems to be derived from a single source (the Nepalese catalog), with some casualty figures added. This rather highlights the difference between some event (or series of events) being notable versus shown to be notable. It's not so much that the Nepal list shows the aftershocks to be mundane, as it does not show otherwise. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:45, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Poll on a proposed statement

I believe we have a general consensus, which I propose to express as follows:

Aftershocks – the series of steadily smaller and less frequent events that typcially follow a major earthquake — are commonplace, and generally not notable. Lists of aftershocks selected by any arbitrary criteria are deemed to be WP:INDISCRIMINATE collections of trivia, and generally discouraged, unless the list itself, as established and discussed by a reliable source, is notable.

Please indicate whether you concur, or not, that we have consensus for this statement. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:56, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

There having been a fair amount of discussion with no strong conflicts, and no objections to the proposed statement, I invite an uninvolved editor to summarize and close this RfC per WP:RFCEND and WP:CLOSE. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:56, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

List of largest earthquake by year

I support keeping the Largest earthquakes by year list in the article. It's a list of earthquakes, there isn't a separate article with the list, it's interesting, and it's hard to get the data otherwise. The table could be fixed up a little - I'd like to see a separate column for country and for earthquake name, with the latter being a link to the earthquake article, and the date should be immediately to the right of the year. But overall, I think it's worth keeping. Argyriou (talk) 16:11, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I am dubious. Do we (anyone?) really need a list of each year's single biggest quake? That seems quite trivial. Why not list every quake above, oh, 7.5, which could be sorted by magnitude or year? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:02, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I am also dubious, but not sure about your suggested 7.5+ list, I estimate nearly 1,000 events - we already have a list of largest by magnitude of 8.5+. My main issue is that the page is already long enough without this extra list. Mikenorton (talk) 23:07, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, the cut-off could be adjusted. The 8.5+ list has only 36 events (though the ISC finds 58). If the cut-off is adjusted such that each year gets at least one then we have each year's largest quake. Plus a few others. I just don't know how many total that would be. (G-R relation?) But then, I am not convinced we need any such list. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:13, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

I also support keeping the list of largest earthquakes by year. It's not long and it's interesting. --Ita140188 (talk) 02:17, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Why wouldn't the list of largest earthquake by year be a separate list page? Just like the lists of notable earthquakes in certain time periods? Then the list could have its own discussion of inclusion criteria, and we can all argue about how far back it can reasonably be extended.

Alternatively, the largest by year should be part of the List of 21st-century earthquakes, since that is as far back as it currently goes. If it gets expanded to include earlier years, then it will definitely be too long for this page, and could become its own list. An argument could be made that such a list is sufficiently notable on its own because it allows for discussion of the history of seismological observation and societal response to events (a discussion which may already exist in other articles). Such a list also could be tied into any discussion of the statistical occurrence of large earthquakes that I know exists in other articles.

Either way, I do not feel that it should be the first list fully spelled out in a list of earthquake lists. That lends way too much weight to the 21st century events.Elriana (talk) 19:33, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Most studied earthquakes

A few questions about this relatively new list: 1) Should the magnitude be a column? I would find that interesting. 2) Should there really be 50 entries? We don't go to 50 entries on most of the other lists included within this page. Is there a different cutoff that makes sense? Elriana (talk) 20:47, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

The table has exactly 50 entries because that is what the source – the ISC's figure 2 at http://www.isc.ac.uk/event_bibliography/overview.php – has. They collated the data, and cut it off at the top fifty. Conceivably we could download the entire bibliographic database, sort it, and pick off however many we want. But I wouldn't recommend that. And I don't know how any other number is better than fifty. (And please don't anyone suggest listing each year's most studied earthquake.)

I oppose including magnitudes, in part because I think they are overrated, and that editors tend to get too fixated on a simple number rather than grappling with the nuances. And also because there are almost always multiple magnitudes, which leads to bickering as to which magnitude is best.

The key to this table is the count of papers. (Which I considered putting putting in as the first column, but decided against.) All the other fields are just identifiers. ("Rank" is a proxy for the paper count.) While it might be interesting to see how "most studied" quakes are distributed by time or magnitude across the range of all quakes, I don't see what the value is in sorting this subset by any criterion other than "how much studied". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:02, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Earthquakes in historic countries

Back in 2009, there was a discussion about use of historic names of countries for historic countries. User:J. Johnson has reverted the addition (by User:Lorent33) of an earthquake in Hawaii which occurred in 1868, when Hawaii was independent. The discussion in 2009 wasn't very conclusive. So - should we keep the 1868 Hawaii earthquake as the biggest for the former country of Hawaii, or not? Argyriou (talk) 20:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)