A 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Lushan County, Ya'an, in China's Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.
The Lushan earthquake or Ya'an earthquake (Standard Tibetan: , Yak-ngai Sayom) occurred at 08:02 Beijing Time (00:02 UTC) on April 20, 2013. The epicenter was located in Lushan County, Ya'an, Sichuan, about 116 km (72 mi) from Chengdu along the Longmenshan Fault in the same province heavily impacted by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The magnitude of the earthquake was placed at Ms 7.0 by China Earthquake Data Center, Ms 7.0 by Russian Academy of Sciences, Mw 7.0 by Geoscience Australia, Mw 6.6 by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Mw 6.6 by the European Alert System (EMSC) and Mj 6.9 by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). 1,815 aftershocks have been recorded as of 00:00 (UTC+8h) April 22.
The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with Mw or Mw, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. It was defined in a 1979 paper by Thomas C. Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori. Similar to the local magnitude scale (ML ) defined by Charles Francis Richter in 1935, it uses a logarithmic scale; small earthquakes have approximately the same magnitudes on both scales.
Moment magnitude (Mw ) is considered the authoritative magnitude scale for ranking earthquakes by size. It is more directly related to the energy of an earthquake than other scales, and does not saturate—that is, it does not underestimate magnitudes as other scales do in certain conditions. It has become the standard scale used by seismological authorities like the U.S. Geological Survey for reporting large earthquakes (typically M > 4), replacing the local magnitude (ML ) and surface wave magnitude (Ms ) scales. Subtypes of the moment magnitude scale (Mww , etc.) reflect different ways of estimating the seismic moment.