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# On top of the world
Mount Everest grows four metres after China and Nepal agree new height measurement
The new official height of the world’s tallest peak is 8,848.86 metres.
CHINA AND NEPAL have jointly announced a new height for Mount Everest.
The new official height of the world’s tallest peak is 8,848.86m, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said.
The figure is slightly more than Nepal’s previous measurement and about four metres higher than China’s.
The discrepancy was due to the China measuring the rock base on the summit and not – as with the new reading – the covering of snow and ice on the peak.
The new height was agreed upon after the two counties sent surveyors from their respective sides of the mountain in 2019 and 2020.
Nepal decided to conduct the survey – its first – after suggestions that tectonic plate movements including a major earthquake in 2015 may have affected the height.
Contains reporting from © AFP 2020
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