Everest’s height to be settled by Nepal

NEPAL: Nepal has launched a ‘‘national pride’’ project to measure the height of Mt Everest, following in the footsteps of India and China.

The project is partly to establish whether an earthquake in 2015 affected the height of the world’s tallest mountain, but also to enable Nepal to catch up with its regional neighbours.

Nepal has never independently measured its height, despite it laying claim to Everest’s summit point.

Over the years, the mountain’s true height has been debated by geologists and mountaineers, the crux of disagreement being whether the snow atop it should be included.

The official height is 29,028 feet (8848 metres), determined by an Indian expedition in 1955.

However, the first mission to measure it was led by Andrew Waugh, of the Indian Royal Surveyor General, in 1847, who found it to be 29,002ft (8840m). In 1999, the National Geographic Society and Boston’s Museum of Science measured the ‘‘snow height’’ at 29,035ft (8850m). A Chinese mission in 2005 concluded the ‘‘rock height’’ is 29,016ft (8844m).

Nepal will take the snow height as the basis for a definitive measurement, in a project of ‘‘national pride’’.

‘‘There are reports that changes are noticed in the height of Everest due to the recent earthquakes,’’ said Neeraj Manandhar, deputy director general of the Nepalese department of survey. who will lead the project.