Observatories and Research Facilities for European Seismology

Detailed information (recent earthquakes)

This page is meant to serve as an explanatory guide to the recent earthquake page.

The recent earthquakes page provides direct links (WILBERII web interface) to recently acquired waveform data from the Virtual European Broadband Seismograph Network (VEBSN). The VEBSN is an initiative in which several European observatories and universities contribute to provide rapidly high quality data for medium-to-large size earthquakes in Europe. The Orfeus Data Center (ODC) selects on magnitude criteria. M>5.5 (worldwide) and M>4.5 (within the European Mediterranean region). Occasionally, the ODC may select also smaller magnitude events or events with doubtful locations, as our goal is primarily to provide rapidly possibly relevant waveform data.

Explanation of headings

Label	Meaning
Date time	Rapid automatic timing as determined by the VEBSN at the ODC, or the EMSC or the NEIC
Product	Broadband waveform event data in (mini)SEED format obtained from the VEBSN. The Pool Of Networked Data (POND) contains initially (quickly after the event) five minute sequences of data (5min) extract ed from the real-time buffer. As more data becomes available this will be replaced by Collection of UnpRocessed Data (curd), i.e. full length data. The data overview page provides a complete explanation of these products.
Lat	Latitude in degrees (positive is North, negative is South)
Long	Longitude in degrees (postive is West, negative is East
Depth	Event depth in km
Magnitude	Preliminairy magnitude determinations:
	M_b - Body wave magnitude, automatically (and rapidly) determined on the ODC-VEBSN real-time data. These estimates are approximate and may contain errors.
	M_s - Surface wave magnitude, occasionally determined on the ODC-VEBSN data.
	M_l - Richter (local) magnitude, occasionally determined for smaller European events from the ODC-VEBSN data or by the EMSC (in the case of an EMSC-MIX location) on their parameter data.
	Mag - Magnitude determined by the NEIC.
Author	The agency which reported the location. The locations are updated with time as improved locations become available in the following order:
	ODC-VEBSN - rapid automatic locations as determined by the Orfeus Data Center using the VEBSN. These are usually available within 10-15 minutes o r less. Locations of medium to large earthquakes within Europe are accurate.
	EMSC-MIX - rapid automatic locations as determined by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) using automatic picks from many obse rvatories in and around Europe.
	EMSC-ALERT - quality controlled locations by the EMSC using all available phase picks from observatories in Europe and its surroundings. Earthqua kes in Europe and its surroundings.
	NEIC-BQ - quality controlled locations by the NEIC using all phase picking from the GSN and additional stations. Earthquakes outside the Europe an d its surroundings.
Location	Location of the earthquake according to the Flinn-Engdahl regions.

Note: A rapid event location is not replaced if a quality controlled location does not become available.

More data

Older data can be viewed and extracted in WILBERII or extracted directly by ftp from the POND directory.

A complete overview of the data available at ORFEUS and how to retrieve this can be found on the data overview page.