Whenever there’s a series of destructive or notable earthquakes, scientists get asked the same question: are earthquakes becoming more frequent?

Over the past three months, multiple large earthquakes have occurred near population centers around the world, resulting in devastating impacts to people and infrastructure:

  • Philippines (magnitude 7.8)
  • Indonesia (M7.7)
  • Venezuela (M7.5 and M7.2)
  • Colombia (M7.4)
  • Japan (M6.8).

In addition, there have been moderate-sized earthquakes on Hawai’i Island (M6.0) and Granada, Spain (M5.2) that have caused minor to moderate damage.

Is this unusual? To answer that question, we need to look at the data.

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