ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Solid Earth Geophysics
Earthquake swarms on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge: assessing the applicability of a global catalogue for seismic analysis
Rachel Zhong 1
Jonathan Edward Rich 2
Philip J Heron 1
1. University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Canada
2. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
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Abstract
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) is mostly positioned at great distances from on-land seismic stations. As a result, analyses of earthquakes are challenging, with focused studies often coming through temporary local recording devices. Although previous work has explored batches of local earthquakes (known as swarms) to uncover information on plate tectonic boundary kinematics, there has been limited large-scale analysis of swarms across the ridge. Here, we take a global earthquake dataset and apply cluster analysis to produce an overview of swarm dynamics across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge latitudes 52oN and 63oN (a portion of Reykjanes Ridge). Our work produces over 150 swarms as compared to only 6 swarms discussed in previous work for the same location and time period. In particular, the swarms generated from this dataset are fleeting in time (<24 h) and stable in location (<20 km). The work here also outlines the limitations of using such a generic global dataset and highlights that this study is unable to fully capture the seismic dynamics of a Mid-Atlantic Ridge earthquake event. However, this methodology of large-scale analysis of a broad dataset can supplement local high-resolution data with quantity of swarm events over quality of seismic characteristics. Here, we provide an overview of timing, location, and occurrence of swarms – identifying potential areas for future exploration.
Summary
Keywords
cluster analyis, Earthquake swarms, global catalogue, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, plate tectonics
Received
23 October 2025
Accepted
17 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Zhong, Rich and Heron. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Philip J Heron
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