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A succession of powerful earthquakes across Latin America and Asia has made 2026 feel like an unusually restless year, prompting questions about whether the planet has entered a period of heightened seismic activity. Two earthquake specialists who spoke to Anadolu Agency (AA) said this surge is not supported by data.
A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia, a country in northern South America, on Aug. 10. Four days later, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck beneath the Flores Sea in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago nation, which triggered a tsunami and a long aftershock sequence.
Earlier events this year included a magnitude 7.8 quake south of the Philippines on June 7, a magnitude 7.5 event near Venezuela on June 24 and a magnitude 7.3 quake off southern Mexico on July 17.
"There are, on average, about 16 magnitude 7-plus events per year. There have been 11 so far this year, so it is a very typical year. The difference is that this year, the events are more newsworthy than previous years," said Richard Styron, a senior active faults specialist at the Global Earthquake Model Foundation.
This figure is consistent with the long-term record maintained by the US Geological Survey (USGS), which estimates about 15 earthquakes in the magnitude 7 range and one magnitude 8 or greater event in an average year.
Margarita Segou, an earthquake seismologist at the British Geological Survey (BGS), reached the same conclusion, saying the world remains within a normal year-to-year variation.
The global picture must be distinguished from regional patterns, she said, since areas such as Indonesia, Venezuela, and Colombia have different tectonic settings and rates.
Indonesia has averaged one to two magnitude 7-plus events per year over the past decade, meaning its recent quake fell within its observed rate.
The impression of a surge is strengthened when several major events occur within weeks of one another, a pattern Styron said can emerge even when earthquakes are independent.
"Truly independent events often appear clustered, but this is purely coincidental. Mathematically, a purely random, independent occurrence is called a Poisson process," he told AA.
Segou said the same question has repeatedly surfaced following earlier runs of major earthquakes, pointing to research conducted after a similar period in 2014 that found the activity remained within statistical expectations.
"People's memories tend to be shorter," she said, adding that scientific memory is longer but still limited by researchers' own lifetimes.
The recent earthquakes have also drawn attention because several struck populated areas or produced secondary hazards.
The Colombian Geological Service (SGC) measured the Aug. 10 earthquake at a depth of 103 kilometers, calling it the country's largest recorded event of the 21st century, with more than 20,000 reports of shaking from over 1,200 population centers.
Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) placed the Flores Sea earthquake at a much shallower depth of about 15 kilometers, noting it was an offshore reverse-faulting event that generated a tsunami and thousands of aftershocks.
The contrasting depths and consequences made both events especially prominent, even though their occurrence did not push the global count outside the expected range.
Both specialists said earthquake triggering is real but clearest near the original rupture, particularly within an aftershock sequence. Segou said scientists increasingly use the broader term "triggered seismicity" for the process traditionally described through aftershocks.
Following a large rupture, the Earth's crust tries to rebalance to reach a new state, transferring stress to nearby parts of the crust and sometimes producing further earthquakes large enough to worsen existing destruction, she said.
Scientists can estimate where aftershocks are more likely by calculating stress changes around a rupture. This allows forecasters to assign probabilities to the number, location and magnitude of aftershocks expected over a defined period, similar to a daily weather forecast.
Styron said the geographical range in which triggering may be considered scales roughly with the size of the first earthquake, with rough distances of 1 kilometer for a magnitude 5 and 100 kilometers for a magnitude 7 within a short time frame. Beyond that range, the evidence becomes progressively weaker, he said.
This distinction matters when considering whether the Colombian and Indonesian earthquakes were connected. Seismic waves from a very large earthquake can travel around the planet and may disturb faults far from the epicenter, but the observable effect is generally limited to very small earthquakes.
"There is no evidence or physical mechanism known to support triggering of large events over great distances," Styron said.
Segou said the Colombian earthquake was consistent with the region's known tectonic history, while Indonesia is independently one of the world's most seismically active areas, and establishing that a distant earthquake promoted another large rupture would require a detailed, rare study.
Another reason earthquake activity can appear to increase is the rapid improvement in monitoring. Denser seismic networks, machine learning and artificial intelligence now allow scientists to identify large numbers of small events that older systems would have missed, Segou said, adding that while such quakes are not usually felt by the population, they carry significant scientific value.
These detailed catalogs help researchers track how a sequence evolves, but they do not explain the apparent rise in major earthquakes, since the global record for large events has long been reliable.
"We are seeing very typical numbers of events this year. Again, the difference is in how newsworthy the individual events are," Styron said.
While population density does not influence whether an earthquake occurs, it can transform a geological event into a human catastrophe.
The outcome depends on where the rupture happens, its depth, the strength and duration of shaking, local ground conditions, exposure and the resilience of buildings and infrastructure.
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