Earthquakes

If you listen to the media these days, you could be forgiven for the impression that major earthquakes are happening at an ever-increasing rate, what with the major coverage of earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and now China. In fact, earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or greater on the Richter scale have been happening at an average rate of 18 per year worldwide since 1900,
 with an average of one quake greater than 8.0 in magnitude. The Chinese earthquake is actually reported as only being a 6.9 magnitude at its peak, and more than 130 quakes are recorded on average each year in the 6.0-6.9 range. So far, 2010 looks like it is on track to be about average for the number of major earthquakes recorded. The difference lies in the number of deaths those earthquakes are causing: only one year (2004) in the past twenty has seen (barely) more earthquake deaths than we have seen already in 2010, and if the same rate continues, 2010 will see more earthquake deaths than every year since 1990 combined. (The USGS reports an estimated 580,019 deaths from earthquakes for 1990-2009, versus an estimated 223,142 deaths through the first 104 days of 2010, which projects to an annual total of 783,143) Yikes!