I’ve chatted with a number of reporters over the past few days following the Ridgecrest earthquakes and have noticed that there’s some confusion surrounding the words “magnitude” and “intensity.” Some have been using the two words interchangeably, but from a seismological point-of-view, that’s not accurate. The difference is particularly important when discussing alerting thresholds for earthquake early warning.

What's the difference between earthquake magnitude and shaking intensity? When it comes to earthquakes, the terms "magnitude" , "intensity", "size", and "strength" are sometimes used synonymously. However the subtle differences between these terms are pretty important, especially when discussing earthquake early warning alerting thresholds.

You can also check out the video here: Magnitude vs. Intensity