There was just now an earthquake beneath Panamá. The major plate boundary in the region is a subduction zone (convergent plate boundary) where the Cocos and Nazca plates dive northwards beneath the Caribbean plate forming the Middle America trench (MAT).…
Earthquake Report: Papua New Guinea
Earlier today, there was an intermediate depth beneath eastern Papua New Guinea (PNG). With a magnitude M = 7.2, this is one of the largest earthquake so far in 2019. Here is the USGS website for this earthquake. Today’s earthquake…
Earthquake Report: Sulawesi, Indonesia
Today I awoke to the USGS earthquake notification service email about an earthquake offshore of Sulawesi, Indonesia. There was an earthquake with a magnitude M 6.8 to the southeast of the Donggala/Palu earthquake from 28 September 2018. Here is the…
18 April 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
Today is the anniversary of the 18 April 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. There are few direct observations (e.g. from seismometers or other instruments) from this earthquake, so our knowledge of how strong the ground shook during the earthquake are limited…
Earthquake Report: Northern Alaska
At shortly before 13:30 today in northern Alaska there was a large earthquake, with a magnitude of M=5.1 (now M 5.0). https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ak0193wxcfea/executive Many of us are familiar with the Good Friday earthquake, a megathrust subduction zone earthquake. This earthquake has…
Earthquake Report: Peru
On 01 March 2019 there was an intermediate depth earthquake near the border of Peru and Bolivia. In the past century, this is the first earthquake in this area at this depth. There are some historic quakes to the east,…
Earthquake Report: Ecuador
Well, as I was getting up this morning, my social media feed was abuzz about the intermediate depth earthquake in Peru. While it was quite deep ( Magnetic Anomalies In the map below, I include a transparent overlay of the…
Earthquake Report: Guatemala and Mexico
This morning (my time) there was a moderately deep earthquake along the coast of southern Mexico and northern Guatemala. Here is my Temblor article about this M=6.6 earthquake and how it might relate to the 2017 M=8.2 quake. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us2000jbub/executive Offshore…
Earthquake Report: 2018 Summary
Here I summarize Earth’s significant seismicity for 2018. I limit this summary to earthquakes with magnitude greater than or equal to M 6.5. I am sure that there is a possibility that your favorite earthquake is not included in this…
Earthquake Report: Bering Kresla / Pacific plate
We just had a large earthquake in the region of the Bering Kresla fracture zone, a strike-slip fault system that coincides with the westernmost portion of the Aleutian trench (which is a subduction zone further to the east). At first,…