Earthquake Scale Comparison

The types and nature of these waves are described in the section seismic waves because the size of earthquakes varies enormously it is necessary for purposes of comparison to compress the range of wave amplitudes.
Earthquake scale comparison. A measurement scale used to measure the earthquake magnitude is the richter scale which was developed by the seismologists charles francis richter and beno gutenberg. While the mercalli scale describes the intensity of an earthquake based on its observed effects the richter scale describes the earthquake s magnitude by measuring the seismic waves that cause the earthquake. Earthquake magnitude is a measure of the size or amplitude of the seismic waves generated by an earthquake source and recorded by seismographs.
The two scales have different applications and measurement techniques. Because of various shortcomings of the m l scale most. The jma intensity scale should not be confused or conflated with magnitude measurements like the moment magnitude mw and the earlier richter scales which represent how much energy an earthquake releases.
A magnitude 5 earthquake is ten times as. Use this online richter scale comparison calculator to find the difference of two earthquake magnitudes and measure which how bigger is a magnitude than the other. This was later revised and renamed the local magnitude scale denoted as ml or m l.
The mercalli scale is linear and the richter scale is logarithmic.