Everest almost a meter higher!

The world's highest mountain Mount Everest is 0.86m higher than had been previously officially calculated; Nepal and China jointly announced this at a virtual press conference on 09th December 2020 attended by Nepal's Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

Everest stands on the border between China and Nepal and mountaineers climb it from both sides.  Officials at Nepal's foreign ministry and department of survey said surveyors from both countries co-ordinated to agree on the new height.

Mount Everest new height is 8,848.86m or 29,032 ft and is 50 to 60 millions years old. It continues to rises approximately ½ metre per century and is formed by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. The summit is a dome of snow and has space for 6 standing climbers.

Nepalese surveyors went up to the summit last year, while Chinese surveyors went up in May, becoming the only team to reach the top in 2020, after Nepal suspended all expeditions during the coronavirus pandemic and China banned foreign travellers. Nepalese officials said they used 12 different lower peaks looking up at the Everest summit for their trigonometry calculations, to achieve a more precise result. Similarly Chinese surveyors used the same method. 

Nepal used the Bay of Bengal as its sea level, but India had already surveyed a point closer to Everest from the bay near the India-Nepal border and was able to provide the Nepalese surveyors with the height at that point. From there, Nepal built a network of line-of-sight stations stretching nearly 250km or 155 miles to the point Everest first become visible, creating a chain of points it could measure and add together.

Chinese surveyors used the Yellow Sea in the eastern province of Shandong as their sea-level base. "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," Jiang Tao, associate researcher at the Chinese academy of surveying and mapping, told China Daily.

Both countries used Satellite Systems to receive elevation data from numerous receivers in their calculations.  Chinese surveyors used China's BeiDou navigation satellite system, similar to the Global Positioning System, or GPS.

"Using the system, snow depth, weather and wind speed would also be measured to help glacier monitoring and for ecological protection," news agency Xinhua reported. Nepalese surveyors used GPS to make their calculations.

Book a trip to Nepal and Tibet China to enjoy the world's highest and one of the most popular spots to see Mount Everest and its regions by flight, drive or trek!