Timeseries of earthquakes with M = 5 or greater (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Timeseries of earthquakes with M = 5 or greater (2011)

ocean.si.edu

20 pointssfc3212 comments

Open articleView on HN

Perhaps we simply got better at detection?

> Modern recording equipment has been in use since about 1900.

What is the difference in sensitivity between a seismometer made in ~1900 vs 2023?

That's a fair point. I don't know but the graph is very heavy on the right.

It would be interesting to see the time series on the number of deployed seismometers from 1900 to the present.

Earthquakes can be sensed from basically anywhere, only the time it takes the P/S waves to travel to you are different, especially if the quake is M>5.

More sensors don’t really add more detections, but are useful for pinpointing an origin.

If you don’t have enough sensors how do you distinguish between M<5 far away and M<5 in proximity?

The timing it takes for the P/S waves to reach you. One travels through the center, and the other travels along the surface of the earth.

Here's a quick rundown: https://slcc.pressbooks.pub/physicalgeography/chapter/4-3/

The chart cites Wikipedia as the source. Maybe it’s just that earthquake after ~2000 tend to have a significant higher chance to be logged on Wikipedia compared to before? Wikipedia launched around 2001, so it would fit in that timeframe.

Yeah, there's something very suspect about this data.

Just off the top of my head, I'm quite sure there were more than 3 earthquakes with magnitude between 5.0 and 6.0 for the 80 year span between 1900 and 1980.

Also, there's a notable discontinuity of exactly magnitude 7.0 earthquakes starting at the year 2000 that doesn't look like raw data.

In light of the current earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, it would be great to see a similar graph to 2022 at least. Why stop as at 11 years ago?

Frequency of serious earthquakes seems to be increasing.

Assuming the data are accurate (e.g. we are no more able to record quakes today than we were 100 years ago due to tech improvements), then that would seem to be the case. It would be interesting to show a map of only 5-6 quakes overlaid on a map of fraking locations.

We got better at detecting and recording them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com