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Relationship between body wave and local magnitudes for Australian earthquakes

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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For Australian earthquakes with local magnitudes in the range ML 4.1-6.5, the relationship between ML and the body-wave magnitude mb may be predicted by the least squares regression line: mb = (0.66 ± 0.20)(ML -4.79) + (4.92 ± 0.04). It is based on 15 earthquakes for which there are at least two measurements of ML and mb for each event, and an additional 14 for which there was only one measurement of ML and/or mb. The more reliable 15 were given four times the weight of the others. A least squares regression line: mb = (0.80 ± 0.17)(ML -4.85) + (4.98 ± 0.04) was obtained from 31 earthquakes, which included these 29, together with the ML 6.9 Meckering and ML 7.0 Meeberrie events for which the data were also weighted as less reliable. The local magnitude range used in this regression is ML 4.1-7.0. We recommend that the first equation be used to estimate mb from ML, because the local magnitudes of the two additional earthquakes are dubious and also the linearity of the relationship may not hold at large magnitudes. Body-wave magnitude measurements made on Australian earthquakes at distances of less than 12° may be too high because the attenuation of P waves differs from that in Gutenberg and Richter (1956).

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Field Value
Title Relationship between body wave and local magnitudes for Australian earthquakes
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/5040e7c7-0879-4d64-84e3-efff6f0a63ee
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Relationship between body wave and local magnitudes for Australian earthquakes". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/relationship-between-body-wave-and-local-magnitudes-for-australian-earthquakes