In order to achieve the ambitious UN climate targets, it is not enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As a complementary option, one can capture CO₂ directly from industrial production or from the atmosphere and store it permanently in the deep underground. For enabling so-called negative emissions, sequestrated CO₂ needs to be safely retained for centuries. Once injected into a reservoir, CO₂ may escape again in two ways: through existing boreholes or through existing faults in the rock above the reservoir meant to seal it. Faults in this caprock may not only influence the long-term containment of CO₂. They are also the place, where earthquakes may occur.

On 29 December 2018 at 9:30 a weak earthquake with a magnitude of 2.9 was observed between Fribourg and Düdingen. The event was mainly felt in these two municipalities, but the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich also received felt reports also from other places within a radius of roughly 15 km. Damages are not expected due to such an event.

The region of Fribourg is well known for weak and shallow earthquakes. In the past numerous similar events were detected every year. However they are typically too weak to be felt by the public.

This year's Christmas wreath is decorated with red and orange berries. They show the location of the earthquakes with a magnitude of 2 or greater recorded by the national seismic network from January to November 2018.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

On 26 November 2018 the time had come: InSight successfully landed on the Elysium plain. This was not an easy task. It was only possible thanks to technologies that had been tried and tested in earlier missions and played together perfectly. The InSight mission had to overcome additional difficulties: Compared to other Mars missions, it entered the atmosphere with a slower velocity, was heavier, landed at a higher point and at a meteorologically less favourable time due to a high risk of sandstorms. Beginning from the entry into the atmosphere, the entire landing took six minutes. By this time, the mission had already covered a distance of approximately 483 million kilometres and spent 205 days in space.

In Switzerland, earthquakes are the natural hazard with the greatest potential for causing damage. They cannot currently be prevented or reliably predicted. But, thanks to extensive research, much is now known about how often and how intensely the earth could shake at a given location in the future. Consult a variety of different maps using our interactive web tool to find out how likely certain earthquakes are in Switzerland.

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The Swiss Seismological Service (SED) at ETH Zurich is the federal agency responsible for monitoring earthquakes in Switzerland and its neighboring countries and for assessing Switzerland’s seismic hazard. When an earthquake happens, the SED informs the public, authorities, and the media about the earthquake’s location, magnitude, and possible consequences. The activities of the SED are integrated in the federal action plan for earthquake precaution.

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