China And Nepal Settle Dispute Over Mount Everest Height

April 12th, 2010 - 9:03 pm ICT by GD  

By Gina Gomez
mountNepal, Apr 12, (THAINDIAN NEWS) Top officials from countries China and Nepal conducted a meeting to settle the dispute regarding the height of the tallest peak in the world, Mount Everest. According to a survey conducted in the year 1954, the official height of Mount Everest was recorded as 29,028 feet. However this Survey of India measurement was conducted using the snow height of the peak.

In the year 2005, Chinese mountaineers scaled the mountain in the month of May and found that the original height of only the rock in Mount Everest was around 11 feet less. Thus from this year on researchers recorded the height of Mount Everest as 29,017 feet. Nepal, however, had previously refused to accept the 2005 measurement. It was only during this week at the talks held in Kathmandu that a conclusion could be arrived regarding the official height of Mount Everest. Researchers in Nepal have now accepted China’s measurement of only the rock structure of Mount Everest as its official height. Thus Mount Everest stands at 8848 meters tall and this is its official height.

However this does not mean that the controversy surrounding the height of Mount Everest, which is located on the borders of China and Nepal, has been put to rest. In the year 1999, an expedition led by the Boston Museum of Science and the National Geographic Society had made use of satellite technology and had recorded the height of the peak as 29,035 feet or 8,850 meters. Even today there is a dispute between environmentalists who claim that the mountain is slowly reducing in height due to environmental changes and rising temperatures.

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