Everest Gets A Growth Spurt As China, Nepal Revise Official Elevation Upward

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The official height of Mount Everest, seen here last year from Namche Bajar, Nepal, has been the subject of intense negotiations between Nepal and neighboring China. On Tuesday, they announced a revised number both countries have agreed upon: 8,849 meters, or about 29,032 feet.

Niranjan Shrestha/AP

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Niranjan Shrestha/AP

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How Tall Is Mount Everest? Hint: It’s Changing

Back in 1856, the Survey of India estimated it to stand 29,002 feet above sea level — a widely accepted conclusion that held until 1955, when an Indian survey re-established the number at 29,029 feet.

The decades since that consensus calculation, though, have racked up reasons to re-evaluate the accepted height. A 2005 Chinese survey estimated it to be 29,017 feet, for instance, while another survey sponsored by the National Geographic Society several years earlier placed the number at 29,035 feet.

And there’s another factor at play: the actual mountain is moving, thanks to geological forces such as plate tectonics slowly thrusting it upward and the massive 2015 earthquake that possibly made it shorter.

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Officials announced Mount Everest’s revised height at a virtual news conference Tuesdayof Mount Everest’s revised height Tuesday in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images

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Officials announced Mount Everest’s revised height at a virtual news conference Tuesdayof Mount Everest’s revised height Tuesday in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images

So Chinese authorities and the Nepali Survey Department undertook an ambitious project to pin down the exact elevation of the highest point on Everest, also called Sagarmatha in Nepal and Chomolungma in Tibet. The two countries each dispatched a surveying team, equipped with GPS receivers, to brave the elements at the summit. From there, they spent months discussing and analyzing their findings.

The project culminated Tuesday with a ceremony broadcast remotely from both countries’ capitals, during which each side revealed and formalized the new number by pressing a crystal ball simultaneously.