In practice, readings from all observing stations are averaged after adjustment with station-specific corrections to obtain the M L value. Where A is the maximum excursion of the Wood-Anderson seismograph, the empirical function A 0 depends only on the epicentral distance of the station, δ \delta. The Richter magnitude of an earthquake is determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs (adjustments are included to compensate for the variation in the distance between the various seismographs and the epicenter of the earthquake). Due to the variance in earthquakes, it is essential to understand the Richter scale uses logarithms simply to make the measurements manageable (i.e., a magnitude 3 quake factors 10³ while a magnitude 5 quake is 100 times stronger than that). All magnitude scales retain the logarithmic character of the original and are scaled to have roughly comparable numeric values (typically in the middle of the scale). īecause of various shortcomings of the original M L scale, most seismological authorities now use other similar scales such as the moment magnitude scale (M w ) to report earthquake magnitudes, but much of the news media still erroneously refers to these as "Richter" magnitudes.
This was later revised and renamed the local magnitude scale, denoted as ML or M L . The Richter scale ( / ˈ r ɪ k t ər/), also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale, is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Francis Richter and presented in his landmark 1935 paper, where he called it the "magnitude scale".
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