Mount Everest: World's highest peak is now just a bit taller

How tall exactly is Mount Everest? This was answered today by Nepal and China who re-measured the tallest peak of the world after experts cast doubt on earlier data citing the devastating earthquake in 2015.

Measured in 1954 by Survey of India, 8,848 metres is the widely accepted and recognized height of Sagarmatha, the Nepali name for the famed world's tallest peak. In 1975, Chinese surveyors measured Mt. Everest 8,848.13 meters above sea level, according to China's official Xinhua news agency.

A survey in 2005 found the summit's rock height at 8,844.43 meters and its ice-snow layer at 3.5 meters deep. There was one meter of unknown material, probably a mixture of ice and gravel, between the rock head and the snow cap, it said in a report in May this year.

On April 25, 2015, there was a huge earthquake in Nepal that triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, geologists said, moved the Everest 3 centimeters to the southwest. Note that before that the peak had been moving northeast at a pace of 4 centimeter each year.

The Nepal government decided to measure the exact height of the mountain amid debates. The Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, Nepal had started the mission to measure the height of Everest two years ago. While Nepal started measuring the height of the mountain in 2017, China did so last year after the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Nepal.

Mount Everest is now taller than ever before. As per new surveys by Nepal and China, the tallest peak of the mountain is now 86 cms more than the previous measurement. As per Nepal, the height of Mount Everest is 8848.86 metres.