Seismic moment is a measure of the size of an earthquake in terms of the energy released during the seismic event. It is a more comprehensive and scientifically useful quantity than the moment magnitude scale (Mw), which is commonly used to report earthquake magnitudes.
Articles by others on the same topic
For uniform slip on a shear fault, scalar seismic moment is , with shear modulus , fault area and slip magnitude . More generally it integrates rigidity-weighted slip. It measures source strength rather than radiated energy alone.