The local magnitude for Hungary was calibrated based on 3490 seismograms of 422 crustal
earthquakes recorded by 43 seismological stations in Hungary between 2016 and 2022.
Following the suggestions of International Association of Seismology and Physics of
the Earth’s Interior, the original Richter (1935) empirical attenuation relation can
be written up as an overdetermined system of linear equations using the approach introduced
by Hutton and Boore (1987). As a solution for the system of equations, the attenuation
coefficients and station correction terms were obtained separately for the vertical
and the horizontal components. The attenuation coefficients in the new scales characterize
the local crustal response well. In Hungary, the amplitudes of the horizontal component
show higher attenuation than the amplitudes of the vertical component. The station
corrections are consistent with the geological features beneath the seismic stations
and resulted in values between −0.48 and +0.32 for the vertical component and between
−0.39 and 0.56 for the horizontal component. The event magnitudes computed with the
new scales do not differ substantially in magnitude from those computed with the SeisComp3
software’s scale currently used in Hungary. However, the main improvement of the new
scale is the reduction in variance between station magnitudes by 56.3%, using attenuation
coefficients and station corrections. We suggest the use of the new vertical scale
in the future.
