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If the richter scale is inaccurate beyond 6.0, what should we be using to measure the magnitude of large earthquakes?

And why do we still report large earthquakes using the Richter scale?

so-so asked in Earthquake! about 1 year ago | Report
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  • Avatar_default
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    Just to expound a little more, the Richter magnitude is a measure of the intensity of the ground motion (i.e. the shaking) of an earthquake, whereas the Moment magnitude is a measure of the total energy released in a quake.

    When they devised the Moment magnitude scale to replace the Richter scale, they intentionally made it so the scale was similar in the mid-ranges where most noteworthy earthquakes occur. I think essentially all earthquake information is given in Moment these days, but since the numbers stayed similar, some members of the media perhaps haven't picked up on this.

    Jack answered in Earthquake! about 1 year ago | Report
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  • Dinolock_small
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    Disclaimer: this entire post is based on under 60 seconds of Google and Wikipedia

    According to Wikipedia, the USGS does not use the Richter scale and hasn't since the 70s or so. They use the "moment magnitude scale" but since the numbers are still pretty close to the Richter scale, it is commonly (and incorrectly) called that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale

    More info can be found in the first paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale where they talk about why the Richter scale gets saturated at higher levels.

    protosaurus answered in Earthquake! about 1 year ago | Report
    1 comment by Russ Campbell, NWEBS…
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    For most of us the Richter scale is descriptive enough to let us know how big an earthquake is. A great book that devotes about 15 pages of an appendix describing the measurement of earthquakes is "A Crack in the Edge of the World," by Simon Winchester. It is an account of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Winchester also spends a fair amount of the book describing plate techtonics and the source of earthquakes generally.

    Bruce Schoonmaker answered in Earthquake! about 1 year ago | Report
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    eggs...

    Kristin Bell answered in Earthquake! about 1 year ago | Report
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