search_earthquakes >Search the Greek earthquake catalogue
Find earthquakes the National Observatory of Athens has located, by when, how big, how deep and where. This is the register of record for Greek seismicity: solutions are reviewed by an analyst rather than left as automatic alerts, and magnitudes are on the MLh local scale calibrated for Greece, so they will differ by a few tenths from the figure a global agency publishes for the same event. Where: either a bounding box, any of its four edges, or a centre and a radius in kilometres — in which case every result also carries how far and in which direction it fell from that centre. When: startTime and endTime, read as UTC, defaulting to the last 7 days. The window is capped at 31 days because this is a single node that scans the whole window before answering and a wider one times out rather than returning slowly; walk the window back in instalments for a longer period. The catalogue begins on 1 February 2011. Results are capped and the answer says when it stopped short, so a count from here is a count of what was returned and not of what happened.
Arguments
- startTimestring
- Start of the window, as a date (2026-09-01) or a moment (2026-09-01T14:30:00). Read as UTC. Defaults to 7 days before endTime.
- endTimestring
- End of the window, same format. Read as UTC. Defaults to now.
- minMagnitudenumber, -2–10
- The smallest magnitude to include, on the MLh local scale this catalogue uses. Most of what it records is under 2 and imperceptible; 3.5 is widely felt, 5 does damage, and the largest Greek earthquake since the register opened is the 6.7 off Samos in 2020.
- maxMagnitudenumber, -2–10
- The largest magnitude to include, on the MLh local scale this catalogue uses. Most of what it records is under 2 and imperceptible; 3.5 is widely felt, 5 does damage, and the largest Greek earthquake since the register opened is the 6.7 off Samos in 2020.
- minDepthKmnumber, 0–800
- The shallowest focal depth to include, in kilometres below the surface. Most Greek seismicity is in the top 20 km; the Hellenic subduction zone puts events under the southern Aegean as deep as 150 km, and a deep one is felt far more weakly at the surface than a shallow one of the same size.
- maxDepthKmnumber, 0–800
- The deepest focal depth to include, in kilometres below the surface. Most Greek seismicity is in the top 20 km; the Hellenic subduction zone puts events under the southern Aegean as deep as 150 km, and a deep one is felt far more weakly at the surface than a shallow one of the same size.
- minLatitudenumber, -90–90
- Southern edge of a bounding box, in degrees. Greece spans roughly 34° to 42° north.
- maxLatitudenumber, -90–90
- Northern edge of a bounding box, in degrees. Greece spans roughly 34° to 42° north.
- minLongitudenumber, -180–180
- Western edge of a bounding box, in degrees. Greece spans roughly 19° to 30° east.
- maxLongitudenumber, -180–180
- Eastern edge of a bounding box, in degrees. Greece spans roughly 19° to 30° east.
- latitudenumber, -90–90
- Centre of a circular search, in degrees. Give with longitude and radiusKm.
- longitudenumber, -180–180
- Centre of a circular search, in degrees. Give with latitude and radiusKm.
- radiusKmnumber, 1–5000
- How far around that centre to look, in kilometres.
- orderBystring, one of time, time-asc, magnitude, magnitude-asc
- Newest first (time, the default), oldest first (time-asc), largest first (magnitude) or smallest first (magnitude-asc). This decides which events survive the limit, so ask for magnitude when the question is about the biggest.
- limitinteger, 1–500
- Most events to return, 1-500. Defaults to 50.
Example arguments
{
"minMagnitude": 3,
"limit": 10
}