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Until now, there has been a generally accepted height of 8,848 meters for Mount Everest, which Indian researchers found in the 1950s.
Since then, however, various teams have measured and obtained slightly different results. Now China and Nepal, on whose common border the mountain lies, have measured and calculated together for the first time.
The new official altitude value could not only have changed due to more precise measurement methods, says Christian Gerlach from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, who researches land measurements and glaciology. In fact, the altitude could have changed, for example due to a shifting of the tectonic plates or the strong earthquake in 2015, which generally caused altitude changes in the Himalayas.
Nepal, one of the least developed countries in the world after the United Nations, initially wanted to measure alone. But after a visit from China’s head of state and party, Xi Jinping, in 2019, it became a joint project under the banner of “eternal friendship,” as said in a joint statement. China also emphasized infrastructure aid to the poor in Nepal, which in turn emphasized its recognition of Taiwan and Tibet as parts of China.
To determine the height, teams from both countries climbed the mountain and measured there with angle measuring devices using already known points in the valley and devices that receive GPS signals. The Nepalese team got up in 2019 when there was a traffic jam of adventurers in the so-called death zone. The Chinese team was there this year Corona, according to media reports, as the only team at all.
To arrive at the new value, gravity measurements were also made in the area around Everest and calculations using a computer model. Because satellite measurement does not directly record height above sea level.
