EGU Seismology Division

Hello to everyone! Today we have the last in our list of four major earthquakes of 2025. Obviously, there are many more happening each year, so if you are interested in those in general, feel free to search using the links and articles we added to our four posts during these last Sundays.

🕯🕯🕯🕯 Advent Sunday 4:
Early in the year, on the 7th of January, the earth shook on the Tibetan plateau. This region is prone to earthquakes, due to its position at the border between the Eurasian and Indian plate, whose collision gave us the Himalayas. With a magnitude of 7.1, it was not even in the top 10 of the strongest earthquakes this year. However, it is always important to keep in mind that magnitude is not the only indicator of a strong earthquake. Often, the measurement of intensity (I to XII on the Modified Mercalli scale) can give us a useful additional point of view, since it describes the effects of an earthquake on different regions. In this case, the earthquake had a rating of IX (violent), the 3rd highest value this year, only behind the 7.7 Myanmar and the 8.8 Kamchatka earthquakes

The high intensity was also the reason for the number of fatalities (126 and possibly more, as well as many injured ones), as well as the high number of buildings destroyed (over 3500) and damaged (over 27000) in over 200 villages in the region, reaching as far as Bhutan, Nepal and India. In addition, the shaking caused cracks in 5 hydropower dams in the region, as well as landslides that affected the infrastructure in different parts of the region.

This event highlights once again the fragility of our infrastructure to earthquakes and the importance of seismological investigation to mitigate the impact.

The photo is taken from NTD, see the link in the list below.

Further information can be found here:

https://www.emsc-csem.org/Special_reports/?id=350

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000pi9w/executive

https://www.ntd.com/powerful-earthquake-hits-tibet_1038939.html

StateOfECS EGUblog EGUseismoblog eurogeosciences europeangeosciencesunion geoscience seismology

Hello hello! We are continuing with our look at a selection of four important earthquakes of this year.

🕯🕯 Advent Sunday 3: The Santorini Volcano Crisis 2025

The island of Santorini was rattled once again, as on several occasions in its history, by a highly unusual and intense seismic swarm that began abruptly on 27 January 2025 and lasted approximately 45 days. The tremors were intensely felt by local inhabitants, prompting Greek authorities to declare a state of emergency on Santorini. The Greek government swiftly activated the "Xenokratis" Civil Protection Plan, suspended construction, and announced plans to construct a permanent evacuation port. The resulting public anxiety led to an "unofficial mass evacuation," with thousands of residents and tourists fleeing the island.

Initially, an intense debate emerged within the scientific community regarding whether the cause was tectonic or volcanic in origin. To resolve this, the seismic network was swiftly densified starting on February 02, with new stations installed to improve coverage. This high-resolution monitoring recovered approximately ~34,000 seismic events throughout the sequence, with the largest event reaching Mw​ 5.3. In March we covered this in our blogpost written by Dr Andreas Karakonstantis from University of Patras, however further studies shed a new light on the origins of this swarm. The crisis was confirmed to be volcanic/fluid-driven, but scientific interpretations of the mechanics differ.

Figures we show here are reproduced based on the catalogue by Lomax et al (2025).

Hello again! We are continuing with our look at a selection of four important earthquakes of this year.

🕯🕯 Advent Sunday 2: The Kamchatka earthquake on the 30th of July.
With a magnitude of 8.8, the 2025 Kamchatka earthquake was not only the strongest one this year, but the eighth largest magnitude ever recorded and the strongest one since the 2011 Tohoku one. Incidentally, they are both part of the same region, which due to its setting at the fast subduction of the Pacific under the North American Plate is often prone to large magnitude events. In 1952, a magnitude 9 earthquake occurred in almost exactly the same location and since then the region has experienced roughly 6 metres of plate motion.

This year, the sequence of earthquakes in the region started 10 days before, even including one with magnitude 7.4, and in total around 1500 aftershocks have been recorded, two of them with major magnitudes of 7.4 and 7.8 in September. However, in contrast to many smaller earthquakes this year, the amount of damage was much smaller, due to the more remote location. Damage and casualties mostly occurred in the nearby city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Likewise, the expected tsunami around the Pacific ocean was fortunately weaker than expected.

Normally, we plot event locations as dots on maps, but with earthquakes this size the extent of the reverse faulting along the fault is so large (around 390 km by 140 km) that it would be more appropriate to visualise the entire area.

Further information can be found here:
https://www.emsc-csem.org/Special_reports/?id=386
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/pt25210002/executive

Hello everyone! The end of the year is approaching fast 🥳🎁🎄 We would like to start to give a big thank you to all our followers and contributors this year 😊 Over the next month, we will use this channel to give you a slightly different version of our Seismo Advent Calendar. For the four Advent Sundays, we will have a look at a selection of four important earthquakes of this year.

These events remind us of the importance of our work in seismology.

🕯 Advent Sunday 1: The Myanmar earthquake on the 28th of March.
With a magnitude of 7.7, the 2025 Myanmar earthquake was not the strongest this year, but due to its location close to Mandalay and the intensity of its shaking (classified as “Extreme” and a scale of X on the Mercalli scale that goes up to XII, the only one to reach such a high level in
2025), the death toll exceeded by far all other earthquakes this year. In addition over the
following weeks hundreds of aftershocks were registered around the region, some of those
reaching magnitude 5. The strike-slip movement of the rupture was captured by a security
camera, the first time it could be filmed in such stunning detail, giving us a stark reminder of the
forces at play.

Further information can be found here:
https://www.emsc-csem.org/Special_reports/?id=352
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000pn9s/executive

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Surviving the Ranking Madness: A Geoscientist’s Guide to Keeping Your Academic Soul Intact The Academic Identity Crisis Ever googled yourself to check if your h-index went up? Compared your publication statistics to a peer? Published in a paywall journal while cursing the system? – Same. Welcome to the slightly neurotic world of academic evaluation—where current incentives often pull ...