Moment magnitude in the context of Surface-wave magnitude

The 1963 Skopje earthquake (Macedonian: Скопски земјотрес од 1963 година) was a 6.1 moment magnitude earthquake which occurred in Skopje, SR Macedonia (present-day North Macedonia), then part of the SFR Yugoslavia, on July 26, 1963, which killed over 1,070 people, injured between 3,000 and 4,000 and left more than 200,000 people homeless. About 80 percent of the city was destroyed.

In the afternoon of 25 April 2015, a 7.8 moment magnitude earthquake struck Nepal and surrounding countries. Tremors from the quake triggered an avalanche from Pumori into Base Camp on Mount Everest. At least 22 people were killed, surpassing the toll of an avalanche that occurred in 2014 as the deadliest disaster on the mountain.

On 6 February 2023, at 04:17:35 TRT (01:17:35 UTC), a moment magnitude (M_w ) 7.8 earthquake struck southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria. The epicenter was 37 km (23 mi) west–northwest of Gaziantep. This strike-slip shock achieved a Mercalli intensity of XII (Extreme) around the epicenter and in Antakya. It was followed by a M_w 7.7 earthquake, at 13:24:49 TRT (10:24:49 UTC). This earthquake was centered 95 km (59 mi) north-northwest from the first. There was widespread severe damage and tens of thousands of fatalities.

The M_w 7.8 earthquake is the largest to strike Turkey since the 1939 Erzincan earthquake of the same magnitude, and jointly the second-largest in the country, after larger estimates for the 1668 North Anatolia earthquake. It is also one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the Levant. It was felt as far as Egypt and the Black Sea coast of Turkey. There were more than 30,000 aftershocks in the three months that followed. The seismic sequence was the result of shallow strike-slip faulting along segments of the Dead Sea Transform, East Anatolian and Sürgü–Çardak faults.

An earthquake struck the Jordan Rift Valley on December 5, AD 1033 and caused extreme devastation in the Levant region. It was part of a sequence of four strong earthquakes in the region between 1033 and 1035. Scholars have estimated the moment magnitude to be greater than 7.0 M_w  and evaluated the Modified Mercalli intensity to X (Extreme). It triggered a tsunami along the Mediterranean coast, causing damage and fatalities. At least 70,000 people were killed in the disaster.

An earthquake with a moment magnitude of 7.0 occurred on 30 October 2020 about 14 km (8.7 mi) northeast of the Greek island of Samos. Although Samos was closest to the epicentre, it was the large Turkish city İzmir, 70 km (43 mi) northeast that was heavily affected—more than 700 residential and commercial structures were seriously damaged or destroyed. One hundred and seventeen people died in İzmir Province while an additional 1,034 were injured. In Greece, there were two fatalities and 19 injured. The earthquake is the deadliest in the year 2020, and the third major earthquake to strike Turkey that year. It generated an unusually large tsunami. The event is called the Samos earthquake by the International Seismological Centre.

On 28 March 2025, at 12:50:52 MMT (06:20:52 UTC), a moment magnitude (M_w ) 7.7–7.9 earthquake struck the Sagaing Region of Myanmar, with an epicenter close to Mandalay, the country's second-largest city. The shaking caused by this strike-slip shock reached a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). It was the most powerful earthquake to strike Myanmar since 1912, and the second deadliest in Myanmar's modern history, surpassed only by upper estimates of the 1930 Bago earthquake. The earthquake caused extensive damage in Myanmar, particularly in areas near the rupture, and significant damage in neighboring Thailand. Hundreds of homes were also damaged in Yunnan, China, while more than 400 apartments were affected in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The earthquake directly killed up to 5,352 people in Myanmar and 103 in Thailand, while one person died from shock in Vietnam. Up to 11,404 people were injured and hundreds more were reported missing. Most of the fatalities in Thailand occurred at a collapsed construction site in Bangkok, whose shallow geology makes it more vulnerable to seismic waves from far away. Authorities in both Myanmar and Thailand declared a state of emergency. As the earthquake struck during Friday prayer hours, collapsing mosques resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Muslims. In addition, more than 8,300 monasteries, nunneries and pagodas were destroyed. The ongoing civil war in Myanmar exacerbated the difficulty of disaster relief and info exposure. It was the deadliest earthquake globally since the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes.