Is the world experiencing more earthquakes now than before?

Al Jazeera examines a decade of earthquake data to see how 2026 compares and explains how and where earthquakes strike. In the past month, three earthquakes of magnitude 7 or above have struck Indonesia, Colombia and Mexico, killing hundreds of people. In June, two powerful quakes seconds apart levelled swaths of northern Venezuela. The run of disasters has prompted a question asked after every cluster of big earthquakes: Is the Earth shaking more than it used to? According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), there are about 20,000 earthquakes recorded globally each year, roughly 55 a day.

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