Obvious Under Reporting

I have been scoping the European Seismic Center realtime seismic page for several months. Generally, the bigger a quake, the more readings are shown for that quake (obviously more seismographs register it). I sort of got used to the pattern of Richter size versus number of reports per quake. Then, about a week ago [July 4], I noticed that the ratio had changed. For example, today (July 10), two quakes in Iran reported at only a maximum of about 6.1. But the number of readings (over 12) previously only corresponded to quakes over size 7.0. The pattern seems to run across the board with quakes being downgraded by 1.0 on the Richter (which is 10 times smaller since the Richter is logarithmic).

This evidence may seem anecdotal to some (though the archives could be checked) but it is totally convincing to me. In fact, when I first heard about about quakes being downgraded, I thought it was a lame way to try to explain the recent lack of big quakes. Now, I'm not so sure.

Harmony, in France