Kathmandu, Nepal
China and Nepal jointly announced a new official height for Mount Everest on Tuesday, ending a discrepancy between the two nations.
The new height of the world’s highest peak is 8,848.86 meters (29,031.7 feet), which is slightly more than Nepal’s previous measurement and about four meters (13 feet) higher than China’s.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Nepalese counterpart, Pradeep Gyawali, simultaneously pressed buttons during a virtual conference and the new height flashed on the screen.
The height of Everest, which is on the border between China and Nepal, was agreed on after surveyors from Nepal scaled the peak in 2019 and a Chinese team did the same in 2020.
There had been debate over the actual height of the peak and concern that it might have shrunk after a major earthquake in 2015. The quake killed 9,000 people, damaged about 1 million structures in Nepal and triggered an avalanche on Everest that killed 19 people at the base camp.
There was no doubt that Everest would remain the highest peak because the second highest, Mount K2, is only 8,611 meters (28,244 feet) tall.
Everest’s height was first determined by a British team around 1856 as 8,842 meters (29,002) feet.
But the most accepted height has been 8,848 meters (29,028 feet), which was determined by the Survey of India in 1954.
In 1999, a National Geographic Society team using GPS technology came up with a height of 8,850 (29,035 feet). A Chinese team in 2005 said it was 8,844.43 meters (29,009 feet) because it did not include the snow cap.
A Nepal government team of climbers and surveyors scaled Everest in May 2019 and installed GPS and satellite equipment to measure the peak and snow depth on the summit.
Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Nepal later that year and the leaders of the two countries decided that they should agree on a height.
A survey team from China then conducted measurements in the spring of 2020 while all other expeditions were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.—AP
