MOUNT EVEREST

Subject: Geography

Context: The Foreign Ministers of Nepal and China jointly certified the elevation of Mount Everest at 8,848.86 metres above sea level — 86 cm higher than what was recognised since 1954.

Concept:

• Mount Everest (also called Sagarmatha in Nepal) is Earth’s highest mountain above sea level, located in the Himalayas between China and Nepal with their borders running across its summit point.
• Its current official elevation is 8,848m which places it more than 200m above the world’s second-highest mountain, K2, which is 8,611m tall and located in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
• Mount Everest 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.
• It was first scaled in 1953 by the Indian-Nepalese Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary.

How and when was the earlier measurement of 8,848 m done?

• This was determined by the Survey of India in 1954, using instruments like theodolites and chains, with GPS still decades away.
• The elevation of 8,848 m came to be accepted in all references worldwide — except by China. Mount Everest rises from the border between Nepal and China.

Need for new measurement:

• The devastating earthquake of April 2015 triggered a debate among scientists on whether it had affected the height of the mountain.
• The Nepal’s government subsequently declared that it would measure the mountain on its own, instead of continuing to follow the Survey of India findings of 1954.