WEB DESK
8,848.86 metres is now new official height of Mount Everest Nepal has announced. The new announcement puts an end to the decades-long debate on the height of the world’s tallest mountain.
The precise height of Mount Everest had been contested ever since a group of British surveyors in India declared the height of Peak XV, as it was initially called, to be 8,778 metres in 1847.
The new height was announced as per the joint measurement efforts by Nepal and China, the two countries the 8,848.86-metre mountain straddles. This new height converts to 29,031. 69 feet. The earlier accepted height was 8,848 metres or 29,028 feet.
The official height was announced simultaneously in Kathmandu and Beijing amid a programme attended by Nepal’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
“This is a historic day,” Foreign Minister Gyawali said, making the much-awaited declaration on Tuesday. “The new height of Mt Everest is 8,848.86 metres.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang too announced the mountain’s height to be 8,848.86 metres immediately afterwards.
Nepal had been working on the measurement of Everest since 2011.
“The measurement is within centimetres of accuracy,” Sushil Dangol, the national coordinator of the Mt Everest Height Measurement Secretariat at the Survey Department, told the Post. “The data of the survey conducted by Nepali and Chinese measurement teams was processed to calculate the height. The margin of error is within centimetres.”
A range of methods including traditional ones and those based on the latest technology were used to come up with the figure.
“There have been several surveys conducted in the last 170 years by different countries but Nepal has never measured its own peak,” said Padma Kumari Aryal, minister for land management, cooperatives and poverty alleviation. “This survey will end debates on the height of Everest once and for all. This will be a commonly accepted height.”