Live Earthquake Monitors

The earthquake category collects live streams that follow seismic activity: seismograph traces, maps of recent tremors and views of places where the ground shakes regularly. Most of them are data streams rather than cameras pointed at a landscape.

A seismograph line runs flat most of the time, with small wiggles from traffic, wind and distant quakes. A significant earthquake shows as a sudden burst of large waves, and on a map new dots appear within minutes, sized by magnitude. Watching both together shows how a single event spreads around the planet: waves from a large quake are recorded on other continents many minutes later.

Such streams are for following events, not for warnings. The data may lag behind real time, magnitudes are revised after the first estimate, and official alerts always come from national seismological services. After a strong quake, aftershocks go on for days and are clearly visible in the traces.