Near-record amount of earthquakes noted in Switzerland in 2023
Around 1,500 earthquakes were recorded in the country and close to its borders last year, the second-highest annual figure after 2019.
Most of the quakes were traced to earthquake sequences close to the Swiss border, such as at Singen in southern Germany, Sierentz in France and Courmayeur in northern Italy, the Swiss Seismological Service said on Wednesday.
Most were too weak to be felt by the population, said the earthquake service, which is based at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich on Wednesday.
+ How the Swiss Seismological Service tries to predict quakes in real time
Last year was characterised by several earthquake sequences in which numerous tremors occurred locally over a few days or even months. The three strongest quakes resulted from these sequences.
The strongest, with a magnitude of 4.3, was noted on March 22 in Haute Ajoie near Réclère in the western canton of Jura. This was the strongest quake in this region in the last 100 years. The tremors were clearly felt in the Jura and the entire western midlands, while isolated reports were also reports from Lausanne, Bern, Lucerne and Zurich.
Last year, there were also several earthquakes which were clearly felt despite their smaller magnitude. According to the Seismological Service, this is usually due to a combination of shallow depth, amplification effects of the local subsoil and other topographical influences, as well as the timing of the earthquake.
Translated from German by DeepL/dos
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
More
Why Switzerland is among the ten fastest-warming countries in the world
More
In Switzerland four out of ten people have a migrant background – who are they?
More
Suicides in Switzerland quadruple among older people
More
French gangs target luxury cars in Switzerland
More
Renewed controversy in Switzerland over US fighter jets – explained
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.