Global CMT Web Page

Introduction and Explanation

The Global Centroid-Moment-Tensor (CMT) Project is overseen by Principal Investigator Göran Ekström and Co-Principal Investigator Meredith Nettles at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University. The project was founded by Adam Dziewonski at Harvard University and operated there as the Harvard CMT Project from 1982-2006, led first by Prof. Dziewonski and later by Prof. Ekström. During the summer of 2006, the main activities of the CMT Project moved with Prof. Ekström to LDEO. This research effort is moving forward under the name "The Global CMT Project". The main dissemination point for information and results from the project is the web site www.globalcmt.org.
The CMT project has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation since its inception, and is currently supported by award EAR-0824694.

Shallow earthquakes, 1976-2005.

The Global CMT Project involves four main activites:

1. Systematic determination, with a three-to-four-month delay, of moment tensors for earthquakes with M>5 globally, and accumulation of the results in the CMT catalog.
2. Rapid determination of moment tensors for earthquakes with M>5.5 globally and quick dissemination of results ("quick CMTs").
3. Curation of the CMT catalog, which contains more than 25,000 moment tensors for earthquakes since 1976.
4. Development and implementation of improved methods for the quantification of earthquake source characteristics on a global scale.

2011/03/11 earthquake Off East Coast of Honshu:

GCMT solutions for mainshock and aftershocks

Cumulative moment for GCMT earthquakes

Links to CMT resources:

CMT catalog web search

CMT catalog and Quick CMT ASCII files

Description of the CMT procedure

• recent article (2012) describing CMT processing procedures, results, and characteristics of the catalog through 2010

Special studies of particular earthquakes or sets of earthquakes

• Glacial earthquakes
• The 2010 Haiti earthquake sequence
• The 2011 Off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku sequence
• The 2010-11 Gulf of Aden swarm

Events of Interest

• 11 April 2012 - M8.6 and M8.2 Earthquakes Off the West Coast of Northern Sumatra

Current events detected using surface waves

Waveform Quality Center (WQC)