Richter scale

The Richter magnitude scale (often shortened to Richter scale) was developed to assign a single number to quantify the energy released during an earthquake.

The scale is a base-10 logarithmic scale. The magnitude is defined as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph to an arbitrary small amplitude. An earthquake that measures 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times larger than one that measures 4.0, and corresponds to a 31.6 times larger release of energy.

Since the mid-20th century, the use of the Richter magnitude scale has largely been supplanted by the moment magnitude scale (MMS) in many countries. However, the Richter scale is still widely used in Russia and other CIS countries. Earthquake measurements under the moment magnitude scale in the United States—3.5 and up, on the MMS scale—are still usually erroneously referred to as being quoted on the Richter scale by the general public, as well as the media, due to their familiarity with the Richter scale as opposed to the MMS. Developed in 1935 by Charles Francis Richter in partnership with Beno Gutenberg, both from the California Institute of Technology, the scale was firstly intended to be used only in a particular study area in California, and on seismograms recorded on a particular instrument, the Wood-Anderson torsion seismograph. Richter originally reported values to the nearest quarter of a unit, but values were later reported with one decimal place. His motivation for creating the local magnitude scale was to compare the size of different earthquakes.Richter, who since childhood had aspirations in astronomy, drew inspiration from the apparent magnitude scale used to account for the brightness of stars lost due to distance. Richter arbitrarily chose a magnitude 0 event to be an earthquake that would show a maximum combined horizontal displacement of 1 µm (0.00004 in) on a seismogram recorded using a Wood-Anderson torsion seismograph 100 km (62 mi) from the earthquake epicenter. This choice was intended to prevent negative magnitudes from being assigned. The smallest earthquakes that could be recorded and located at the time were around magnitude 3. However, the Richter scale has no lower limit, and sensitive modern seismographs now routinely record quakes with negative magnitudes.

ML (local magnitude) was not designed to be applied to data with distances to the hypocenter of the earthquake greater than 600 km[3] (373 mi). For national and local seismological observatories the standard magnitude scale is today still ML. Unfortunately this scale saturates[clarification needed] at around ML = 7, because the high frequency waves recorded locally have wavelengths shorter than the rupture lengths[clarification needed] of large earthquakes.

To express the size of earthquakes around the globe, Gutenberg and Richter later developed a magnitude scale based on surface waves, surface wave magnitude Ms; and another based on body waves, body wave magnitude mb. These are types of waves that are recorded at teleseismic distances. The two scales were adjusted such that they were consistent with the ML scale. This succeeded better with the Ms scale than with the mb scale. Both of these scales saturate when the earthquake is bigger than magnitude 8 and therefore the moment magnitude scale, Mw, was invented.

These older magnitude scales have been superseded by methods for estimating the seismic moment, creating the moment magnitude scale, although the older scales are still widely used because they can be calculated quickly.