Mount Everest moved 3 cm, height not affected by Nepal earthquakes

Beijing: Mount Everest moved three cms during the recent devastating earthquakes in Nepal but contrary to earlier reports the height of world's tallest mountain has not been affected, Chinese official monitoring agency said on Monday.

Mt Qomolangma, the Tibetan/Chinese name for Mt Everest, has moved 40 cms to the northeast over the past ten years, including three cms during the April 25 and May 12 quakes, China's National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation said.

Observers with the department, which has monitoring equipment on the mountain, found that Mt Everest shifted three cms after the devastating earthquake, while the height of the world's tallest mountain at 8,848 metre was left unaffected, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

This is contrary to reports by Europe's Sentinel-1A radar satellite that world's tallest peak may have shrank about 2.5 cm after the earthquake.

The first good view from a satellite in the aftermath of Nepal's deadly earthquake showed that a broad swath of ground near Kathmandu lifted vertically, by about one metre causing severe damage to the city, Live Science reported in May.

The data also indicated Mt Everest might have, got a bit shorter, the report said. But the Chinese data contradicts this.

The devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25 and another measuring 7.3 on May 12, claimed over 9,000 lives and injured another 21,000 people.

Monitoring data collected by China's National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geo-information from 2005 to 2015 shows that the mountain has been moving at a speed of four cms per year and has been growing by 0.3 cms annually.

The mountain is located on the collision belt for the boundary between the Indian and the Eurasian Plates, where the crustal movements are active.

Geographical changes in the area have great influence on the climate, environment and ecology of East and South Asia, the Chinese experts said.

The administration set a satellite monitoring system on Mt. Everest in 2005 and has been observing the movement of the mountain since then.