New Delhi (NVI): The highest point on Earth, Mount Everest, has a newly announced elevation. The revised height is now 8848.86 metres, Nepal and China announced after a joint measurement.
“8848.86 metres is the newly-measured height of Mount Everest,” said Nepal’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali said at a briefing.
The new height is 86 cm – a little less than 3 feet – more than the previous measurement, said Gyawali.
The height of the mountain peak that straddles the Nepal-China border, was announced simultaneously by Nepal’s Foreign Minister and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Kathmandu and Beijing.
Reportedly, Nepal government decided to measure the exact height of the mountain amid debates that there might have been a change in its height due to various reasons, including the devastating earthquake of 2015.
According to the earlier measurement done in 1954 by Survey of India, the height of Mt. Everest is 8,848 meters.
Nepal’s Department of Survey had begun the exercise to measure the height of the Mt Everest two years ago.
-CHK
