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
For ndk files and an article describing CMT results through April 6, 2011, see here.

Links to CMT resources:

CMT catalog web search

CMT catalog and Quick CMT ASCII files

Description of the CMT procedure

Special studies of particular earthquakes or sets of earthquakes

Events of Interest

Current events detected using surface waves

Waveform Quality Center (WQC)


Please email comments.
Last modified: September 21, 2012 (M. Nettles)