Did Mt. Everest Just Grow? Here's What Experts Have to Say

Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth, which is located in Mahalngur Himal the sub-range of Himalayas mountain ranges. The Chinese and Nepalese authorities have recently updated the official measurement of the mountain which now measures (snow height) 8,848.86 m (29,032 ft), BBC reported.

Previously, China's official measurement was 8,844.43m which was four meters lower than the measurement of Nepal. The mountain is between China and Nepal and its summit lies across the China-Nepal border. Mountaineers who climb Mount Everest climb it from both sides.

It was just recently that the two countries have agreed to the new measurement of Mount Everest. Reports said that the visit of the Chinese President Xi Jin Ping to Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, last year has sealed the decision for the two countries to jointly announce the new measurement of the Earth's highest peak.

Why do the two countries differ in the measurement of Mount Everest?

China and Nepal differ in measurement because the former only measured the mountain's rock height while the latter argued that the snow on top of Mount Everest should also be measured.

In 2005, the Chinese surveyors have remeasured the mountain and Nepal said that China has been putting them under pressure to accept the measurement of China. So they decided to remeasure the mountain themselves to set the record straight.

For the past years, Nepal has been using the measurement set by the Survey of India in 1954 which was 8,848 meters in height. But for the first time, they have now conducted their own measurement of the summit. They trained four Nepalese land surveyor for two years for this mission before they were sent to the mountain.

The spokesman for the department of survey of Nepal, Damodar Dhakal, said that with their young, technical team they are hoping to measure the mountain on their own.

"For summiteers, scaling the highest peak means a great accomplishment. For us, it was just the beginning," said Nepal's lead surveyor Khimlal Gautam. "Unlike other surveys of the Everest in the past, we chose 03:00 to minimize errors that could have been caused because of sunlight in the day time."

Mount Everest is remeasured because some geologists suggested that there was a major earthquake in 2015 that may have impacted the height of the said mountain. This 7.8 magnitude in Nepal has killed almost 9,000 people in the country and created an avalanche that buried some parts of the base camp in the mountain.

According to the Independent, the new agreement between China and Nepal puts an end to the dispute on the official height of Mount Everest. The Chinese leader said that the two countries are committed to protecting the environment around the mountain as well as cooperating in doing scientific research on the mountain.

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How did they remeasure Mount Everest?

When mountains are measured, surveyors start with measuring the base which is the mean sea level. In Nepal's case, they use the Bay of Bengal but since India has already surveyed a point closer to the mountain near the border between the two countries, the data has provided Nepal with the height at that point.

Meanwhile, China has used the Yellow Sea in the eastern province of Shandong as their sea-level base, according to the state-run China Daily via BBC.

Moreover, the surveyors also used trigonometry in solving the mountain's height and they also climbed Mount Everest. Nepal went last year, while China just this year in May which makes them the only team to have reached the summit in 2020 because both countries have banned tourists or mountaineers from climbing due to the COVID-19 threats.

"Once the surveyor's beacon had been placed on the summit, surveyors at stations around the summit measured the distance from the six points to the beacon, which meant at least six triangles could be calculated to determine the mountain's height," China said.

To receive the elevation data from the receivers in their calculations, both countries employed the Global Navigation Satellite Systems. China has used a Chinese version of the GPS device called BeiDou navigation satellite system, while Nepal also used GPS to make its calculations.