The UK has been hit by an earthquake amid a wave of seismic activity across the country over recent weeks.
A 3.1 magnitude earthquake hit Inchlaggan in the Scottish Highlands on Friday afternoon, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has said.
The earthquake struck a depth of 8 kilometres and its impact spanned 24 kilometres, the survey’s website shows.
There have been more than 100 earthquakes recorded in the UK so far this year with at least nine detected in just one week in July.
The past month has seen 18 small earthquakes in and around the British isles, ranging in magnitude from 0.2 to 3.2 on the Richter scale.
In one week between 21 July and 27 July, nine earthquakes were recorded by the BGS. This included two 3.2-magnitude earthquakes in the southern North Sea.
On 2 July a 2.5-magnitude earthquake was recorded in Knuckles, a small village in Powys, Wales, with a population of around 350. The quake struck 13 kilometres under the ground.
Shortly after midnight on Thursday 24 July, two earthquakes struck within just nine minutes of each other in Argyll and Bute, western Scotland. These were recorded at 1.3 and 0.8 respectively.
The UK is hit by hundreds of earthquakes every year, experts revealed to The Independent in 2023, as they say the country is ‘riddled’ with fault lines.
The BGS said that as many as 300 earthquakes impact the UK each year, with around a tenth of those being large enough to be felt by people near the epicentre, while the others are detected by sensitive instruments.
Sergei Lebedev, Professor of Geophysics at the University of Cambridge, said that a tremor of a magnitude over three is “fairly common”. He said: “Above three is not a microearthquake – which are very common – and is felt and can cause minor damage so, of course, is a concern.
In fact, earthquakes, in general, are not extraordinary events in this country, Mr Hawthorn added, explaining: “The fault map of the UK looks insane – we’re just riddled with plains of weakness. Geologically speaking, the UK has four or five different land masses, all of which have been squeezed together over many years – so there are faults between the land masses and then there are multiple faults on the land masses themselves.”
