Fig. 1

Horizontal-force (H) and declination (D) traces recorded by the magnetometer at the Greenwich observatory, capturing variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. Notably, the original annotations from 1887 highlight the disturbances caused by the Ligurian earthquake on 23 February. The enlarged section emphasizes the exact time at which the seismic waves, referred to as “disturbances,” were detected (5:38 a.m.). The red trace represents the part of the signal that was digitized (see “Magnetogram digitization” section for more details) and subsequently used for all further analyses. Reproduced with the permission of the BGS \(\copyright\) UKRI 2025 \(\copyright\) NERC 2025. All rights reserved..