A commonly used unit for the acceleration of a free falling mass due to the gravity of the Earth (9.81 m/s). When there is an earthquake, the accelerations caused by the shaking can be measured as a fraction or percentage of gravity (%g)
Peter Bormann, Keiiti Aki, William H. K. Lee, and Johannes Schweitzer (Compilers and Amenders), Glossary of Terms Interest to Earthquake and Engineering Seismologists (Version 1), Publication records from external use of GFZ scientific infrastructure, Germany 2011. http://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/escido c:56137:3/component/escidoc:56143/Glossary_rev1.pd f, (ND/ Erthq - Amer) {980}