Most Significant Earthquakes of 2025

What this chart shows: the 15 earthquakes of 2025 with the highest significance score in the U.S. Geological Survey's catalogue. Each label gives the place, the date (UTC) and the magnitude.

How the data is collected: USGS assigns every event in its ANSS Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog a "sig" value. Its documentation describes it as a number showing how significant the event is, where larger numbers mean a more significant event, determined from factors including magnitude, maximum intensity, felt reports and estimated impact. USGS gives a typical range of 0 to 1,000; the highest-ranked earthquakes of 2025 scored well above that.

Background: USGS's PAGER system estimates fatalities and economic losses after significant earthquakes and assigns an alert level of green, yellow, orange or red; its FAQ says that historically this works out to about 15 yellow, 1-2 orange and 1-2 red alerts a year. Because the score takes felt reports and estimated impact into account as well as magnitude, a smaller earthquake can score higher than a larger one.

Limits: the significance score is a USGS index, not a count of casualties or damage, and USGS does not publish the exact formula in its catalogue documentation. Scores can change as felt reports and impact estimates are updated; these are the values as of September 2026.