Tibet, October 21, 2025 — A magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck Tibet on Tuesday, the National Center for Seismology (NCS) reported.
According to the NCS post on X, the quake occurred at 20:29:44 IST on 21/10/2025 at latitude 28.84 N and longitude 85.55 E, at a shallow depth of 10 km. The shallow focus raises the likelihood of aftershocks and can produce stronger surface shaking than deeper events.
Earlier in the month, the NCS recorded another quake in the region: a magnitude 3.2 event on 06/10/2025 at 21:13:37 IST (Lat 29.28 N, Long 95.26 E, Depth 10 km).
Seismically active, the Tibetan Plateau lies where the Indian plate collides with the Eurasian plate. That ongoing convergence thickens the crust and drives faulting across the plateau. Fault behavior varies across the region: strike-slip faults dominate northern Tibet, while the south shows east–west extension on north–south trending normal faults.
Satellite imagery from the late 1970s and early 1980s identified seven north–south rifts and normal faults in southern Tibet that began developing with extension roughly 4–8 million years ago. In general, the largest earthquakes on the plateau — around magnitude 8.0 — occur on strike-slip faults; normal-faulting earthquakes tend to be smaller. Notably, in 2008 several normal-faulting events across the plateau ranged from about magnitude 5.9 to 7.1.
Because shallow earthquakes send stronger seismic waves to the surface, they pose a greater risk for structural damage and casualties than deeper events of similar magnitude. Local authorities and monitoring agencies continue to track seismic activity and issue alerts as needed.
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