Three earthquakes of a magnitude between five and six took place around the Mediterranean region last month. These occurred at the Strait of Gibraltar (on December 16), western Turkey (on December 28), and central Italy (last Sunday). Despite their magnitude, none of them caused serious damage.

A number of much weaker earthquakes struck close to Malta. These were recorded by the Seismic Monitoring and Research Unit on December 1 just off the coast of Valletta and on December 7, about 121 kilometres east of Malta on the edge of the continental shelf.

Two earthquakes took place on December 15 – one in Sicily (116 kilometres away from Malta) and another 33 kilometres southeast of Malta, and on the Christmas Day, 121 kilometres southwest of Malta.

If readers experience earthquake-related shaking they are invited to fill in the online questionnaire on http://seismic.research.um.edu.mt .

Mediterranean seismicity during 2013

The University of Malta’s Seismic Monitoring and Research Unit (SMRU) has prepared the above animation showing over 800 earthquakes that took place during 2013 in the Mediterranean region.

The red circles are earthquakes of magnitude greater than 3.5 published by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC). The red stars are earthquakes located by the SMRU.

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