Deep #earthquake off the #coast of #Campania, ML 5.9, March 10, 2026 (INGV, edited)

 

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On March 10, 2026, at 12:03 AM Italian time, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake occurred off the coast of Campania. 

The seismic event occurred at an  extremely deep depth , approximately  414 km , well below the common seismogenic depths of Italian earthquakes, which predominantly occur in the upper crust.

This deep event, quite rare for this geographical area, can be traced back to a geological process typical of the southern Tyrrhenian Sea  due to the presence in the Earth's mantle of a " slab " of oceanic lithosphere that has been sinking for several million years beneath the Tyrrhenian Sea.

This phenomenon is accompanied by  frequent seismicity along the Calabrian and Sicilian coasts – less frequent off the Campanian coast – , with earthquakes that in the last 40 years have reached  magnitude ML 5.8 on 28 October 2016 ,  at a depth  of  481 km ,  and magnitude Mw 5.8 on 29 October 2006,  at a depth  of  221 km . 

Another earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5 occurred on 3 November 2010, ML 5.4, at a depth of 506 km, and a significant deep earthquake of magnitude ML 4.2  occurred on the night between  26 and 27 October 2023 off the Sorrento Peninsula (province of Naples).

The strongest known deep earthquake in the area occurred on December 27, 1978, with a magnitude of 5.9 , at a  depth of 392 km off the coast of Gaeta (LT). 

In addition to this event, a 1951 study describes a very strong deep earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea in 1938 with an estimated magnitude between 6.8 and 7.1 ! One of the strongest earthquakes in our historical catalog.

Fortunately, in these cases, the great depth causes a strong attenuation of the seismic waves and therefore a lesser impact on the territory.

The earthquake was felt throughout Italy. In fact, the preliminary map of macroseismic tremors, continuously updated (1:23 a.m. Italian time), obtained from approximately 130 questionnaires sent to the website " Did you feel the earthquake? " shows tremors up to  grade III-IV MCS .

This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Source: 

Link: https://ingvterremoti.com/2026/03/10/terremoto-profondo-al-largo-delle-coste-campane-ml-5-9-10-marzo-2026/

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