Has the number of natural disasters increased recently (Chile is the most recent victim), or is it just a case of better news coverage?

I think it’s the news.

We may hear about these natural disasters quicker because of the speed of communication, but they have always been big in the news pretty much since the invention of news.

Number of Magnitude 7.0 and Greater Earthquakes per Year, Since 1900 (usgs.gov)

From that link I averaged by decade:
1900s 19.6
1910s 22.6
1920s 17.1
1930s 20.2
1940s 29.8
1950s 20.9
1960s 20.4
1970s 20.4
1980s 11.2
1990s 15.3
2000s 14.3

@jaytkay Nice research! That is very interesting. Looks like since the 70s there has been far fewer.

The news needs something to fill the time when it’s on for all hours of the day. Plus it’s getting close to the year 2012 and a lot of people are expecting the world to end. The news is catering to that demographic.

But really, the Earth goes in cycles. Even if it is really more natural disasters going on it’s not a big deal. This kind of thing happens.

Here’s a list of the worst natural disasters.

If it bleeds, it leads.

@jaytkay Do we have any figures for pre-1900?

@jaytkay Our news reported that the richter scale was adjusted sometime since the 1960s. Does that data take this into account? I wonder how technological advancement for measuring earthquake magnitude over the last century effects the accuracy of the measurements over time.

I’ve only been paying attention to news since maybe 2004 so I don’t have much to compare modern reporting to.

@Nullo I have not seen a comprehensive list for pre-1900.
This one says “Selected earthquakes of general historic interest”, so I assume it is weighted towards large cities in more developed areas.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/historical.php

@lilikoi That USGS page I linked earlier says, ”Based on new techniques, such as moment magnitude, a systematic review of all large events is underway. It is expected that as this review continues, these numbers will change. The review has been completed for events from 1990 to the present.”

Wikipedia tells me that moment magnitude figures are very similar to the Richter scale, so the changes should not be drastic.

Major earthquakes can trigger other quakes over great distances.

Its the news and the fact that a lot of young people have no sense of history. Mention a movie made pre-1995 to most people in their 20’s and they’re like “OMG 1990’s so ancient”. To someone like that, anything new that happens is the first time it happened, if you get what I mean.

The number of natural disasters Has increased recently (since the 50s). With the advent of atomic/Nuclear weapons and the prevalence of testing said toys, we have ripped holes in the Ozone which put to shame anything Chlorofluorocarbons could have achieved on their own.
These Ozone holes are allowing in solar radiation the likes of which the Earth has not seen since…since before the Ozone layer was formed.
Add to this the depletion of oil from the earth’s crust over the last 100 years and you begin to see a pattern of extreme earthquakes (apparently the oil is necessary to lubricate the plates during massive Earth movement(s).
Also building dams seems to be responsible for some earthquakes, and mining may be a contributing factor.
Pumping water through hot rocks several kilometers underground in order to harness geothermal energy may contribute to earthquakes.

The number of natural disasters do seem to have increased in frequency, but you should note that these types of eruptive geological action is completely natural, and happen from time to time.

Its really just chance that the Chilean and Haitian earthquakes occurred so close together, as one did not cause the other and there’s no way that they were both influenced by the same body.

I suppose you could look at it two ways, we had a bout of bad luck or we just had it good for a couple years.

@laureth “Get the widow on the set, we need dirty laundry”!

We should distinguish between plate tectonic related phenomena and climate.

Climate change might be responsible for an increase in extreme weather, but just looking at this winter won’t allow scientists to draw any meaningful conclusions.

I’ve heard for plate tectonics there’s some speculation about clustered events. Same for hypotheses for the periodic occurrence of (comet) impact events.

There’s more global media coverage today compared to 50 years ago.