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The moment magnitude scale (a successor to the Richter Scale), was introduced by Hiroo Kanamori and is used by seismologists to compare the energy released by earthquakes. The moment magnitude MW is defined by the equation where M0 is the seismic moment measured in dyne-centimeters (dyn·cm = 10−7N·m). In SI-units the formula is approximately From this formula, one can determine that for each step on the magnitude scale, approximately 32 times as much energy is required. For example, M0 = 6,7,8,9 means energies of approximately 1 petajoule (1 PJ = 1015 Joules), 32 petajoules, 1 exajoule (1 EJ = 1018 Joules), 32 exajoules. The constants in the equation are chosen so that estimates of moment magnitude roughly agree with estimates using other scales such as the Richter magnitude scale. One advantage of the moment magnitude scale is that, unlike other magnitude scales, it does not saturate at the upper end. That is, there is no particular value beyond which all large earthquakes have about the same magnitude. For this reason, moment magnitude is now the most-often used estimate of large earthquake magnitudes. The USGS does not use this scale for earthquakes with a magnitude of less than 3.5.
