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Each step up the magnitude scale means about 32 times more earthquake energy

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The magnitude scale is logarithmic, so a magnitude 7 quake is not slightly bigger than a 6 — it releases roughly 32 times the energy.

Verified · U.S. Geological Survey — The Severity of an Earthquake

Earthquake magnitude is deceptively gentle-looking. The numbers climb one at a time, but the scale is logarithmic: each whole step represents about a tenfold jump in the size of the recorded waves and roughly 31 to 32 times more energy released.

A magnitude 7 earthquake unleashes about 32 times the energy of a magnitude 6, and a magnitude 8 about 1,000 times that of a magnitude 6.

That is why the gap between a moderate quake and a great one is so vast. The original Richter scale measured wave amplitude on a single seismometer, but it “saturates” for the largest events — it cannot tell a giant from a merely huge one.

Seismologists now use the moment magnitude scale, which is built from the fault’s area and how far it slipped. It captures the total energy of even the greatest earthquakes, which is why every record-breaking quake is reported in moment magnitude.

~32x
energy per whole step
~1,000x
energy across two steps
10x
wave amplitude per step

Sources & references

2 references

Well-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.

1 U.S. Geological Survey — The Severity of an Earthquake Government “Each whole number step in the magnitude scale corresponds to the release of about 31 times more energy than the amount associated with the preceding whole number value.” pubs.usgs.gov ↗
2 Encyclopædia Britannica Encyclopedia “Each increase of one unit also represents the release of about 31 times more energy ... The moment magnitude scale ... avoided the saturation problem and thus was used to determine the magnitudes of the largest earthquakes.” britannica.com ↗
✓ Last reviewed Jun 6, 2026

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