In the UK, over 200 earthquakes occur each year with around 30 of these felt by the local population. On average an earthquake of this size occurs every two years with magnitudes of 3.0 occurring three times a year. Because of its position, it only caused minor damage to houses down the east coast of England. Today s earthquake, the largest in the UK for ten years, is some 100 km from the 5.1 ML Bishops Castle earthquake, which occurred on 2 April 1990. That one was felt over the whole of Wales, most of England and into Ireland and Scotland and had almost 30 times the energy of this Warwick earthquake.
Earthquakes occur in the UK as a result of the Atlantic opening and Africa moving northwards.
The pressure builds up and this is then released along a fault, which is a line of weakness in the Earth s crust. Putting the Warwick earthquake into a Global context, over 6,000 of this size or larger occur annually, and it is some 60,000 times smaller in terms of energy than the Turkey earthquake last year which killed over 15,000 people. Click here to see a small version of a seismogram Click here to see a larger version of the seismogram The BGS are conducting a macroseismic survey for this event, using an online questionnaire and also adverts in local newspapers. Here are descriptions of what they experienced from two email respondents. I had woken up a few minutes previously and was just drifting back off into sleep when the incident occurred.