The world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, is now standing at 8,848.86 meters above sea level, according to a joint announcement made by China and Nepal on Tuesday, the Chinese official Xinhua News Agency has reported.

China claimed the measurement it conducted this year was the most accurate to date, as it joined hands with neighbor Nepal to put an updated statistic on the mountain’s altitude, including its snowcap, 15 years after the last exercise.

In 2005, the official figure from China was 8,844.43 meters above sea level, excluding the snowcap, making it 3.7 meters lower than the height measured in 1975.

A Chinese survey team embarked on the third exercise on April 30 this year, reaching the summit on May 27. It took another few months to calculate and verify the data again and again, hence the result was not released until now, said one of the researchers, Jiang Tao.

The height of Mount Everest is not static. According to Dang Yamin, the head of the Chinese surveying team, the Himalayan mountain range started to be pushed up from the ocean by the collision between the Indian subcontinent and the Asian continent about 38 million years ago, Beijing News reported.

The current height of the Himalayas was said to be the result of a rapid rise in the last four million years, during which Mount Everest rose the fastest. Dang explained that due to the subduction of the Indian tectonic plate under the Eurasian plate, Mount Everest was still rising.

A strong earthquake could cause the peak to drop suddenly, however, such as in 1943, when it fell more than 60 millimeters owing to powerful tremors in Nepal.

In its latest surveying this year, China reportedly applied multiple traditional and modern technologies, including the global navigation satellite system, precise leveling, radar detection of the snow depth, weather measurements and satellite movements, to accurately determine the height of Mount Everest.

Click here for Chinese version

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play