Nepal and China measuring height of Mt Everest

Post author:Srishti Pandey
Post published:September 16, 2020

Almost a year after China and Nepal together decided to re-measure the elevation of the world’s highest mountain, the two countries are soon expected to announce its latest official height.

Mount Everest or Sagarmatha, Earth’s highest mountain above sea level, is located in the Himalayas between China and Nepal – the border between them running across its summit point.

The current official elevation is 8,848m, which is 200m more than the world’s second-highest mountain, K2, which is 8,611m tall and located in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The mountain gets its English name from Sir George Everest, a colonial-era geographer who served as the Surveyor General of India in the mid-19th century.

Considered an elite climbing destination, Everest was first scaled in 1953 by the Indian-Nepalese Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary.

Everest’s current official height has been widely accepted since 1956, when the figure was measured by the Survey of India.

The height of the summit, however, is known to change because of tectonic activity, such as the 2015 Nepal earthquake. Its measurement over the decades has also depended on who was surveying.

Another debate is whether the height should be based on the highest rock point or the highest snow point. For years, Nepal and China disagreed over the issue, which was resolved in 2010 when China accepted Nepal’s claim of the snow height being 8,848m, while the Nepali side recognised the Chinese claim of the rock height at 8,844.43m.

Then in 2019, when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Nepal, the two countries agreed to re-measure Everest’s height and announce the findings together.

A reason behind the joint effort is that previous measurements of the mountain were by Indian, American or European surveyors, and that the joint effort represents national pride for Nepal and China who will now come up with their own figure.

Both teams are using different points of reference for sea level – China using the Yellow sea and Nepal using a point close to the Bay of Bengal coast.

The report also said that Nepal has completed its calculations, and is waiting for China to complete its part of the task. A date for the joint announcement has been pushed back because of the pandemic.

The Nepal government does not have any record or authentic version of that survey, as it was done by the Surveyor General of India’s office during the British Raj. That survey, based on trigonometric calculations, is known as the Great Trigonometric Survey of India.