Click on the Swarm Table item in the menu above to see a list of the areas of the world which have had earthquake swarms in the last 7 days. Clicking on an item in the list will open a new window to show the associated area and swarm earthquakes on a map.

Earthquake swarms are numerous small earthquakes fairly localised and may be likened to spots on the face of the Earth - they are localised, they receive focus for a short amount of time and they represent small areas of concentrated activity. Typically, these earthquakes may not even be felt because they are so small.

Currently, there is a limitation which is that this list is produced by region, so there may be other adjoining regions which have earthquakes associated with ones shown here. However, if the adjoining region does not have 5 or more earthquakes within it, it will not appear on this table. It is a limitation of the representation of this information by me and hopefully will be rectified in the fairly near future.. The underlying USGS data itself is not at fault in this respect.

To show what we think is a representative example of some earthquake swarms, we have arbitarily chosen to show swarms of 5 or more earthquakes contained in a small area of 0.5 degrees latitude and 0.75 degrees longitude within the boundaries of a region. These arbitary figures may be changed in the future to better reflect the swarm phenomena.

Note:The regions of California and Alaska have so many daily small earthquakes spread over a relatively large area that it is difficult to distuinguish one particular localised area to show here. This means that these regions are not included in the selection process. Please refer to Earthquake Hot Spots to see both these areas.

Click to show the Swarm Table.