Is Global Warming Shrinking Mount Everest?

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JAN 26, 2005: Mount Everest could be shrinking due to global

warming, according to Chinese authorities, who have announced they

are to send a scientific team to remeasure the mountain.

 

A recent survey found the peak had dropped by 1.3 meters (slightly

more than 4 ft) due to the melting of glaciers resulting from global

warming, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported. It did not

give any details on the survey.

 

China last conducted survey work to estimate the height of the

mountain in 1975, when it concluded that it was 8,848.50 metres

(29,029.35ft) high.

 

Now the state bureau of surveying and mapping, working with the

Chinese national women's mountaineering expedition, will use radar

and global positioning system [GPS] equipment to remeasure the peak,

known locally as Chomolungma, meaning mother goddess of the earth.

 

Nepalese Sherpas, who often climb the peak carrying equipment for

rich westerners who pay to be virtually hauled to the top, have

reported seeing widespread evidence of receding snowlines due to

warmer temperatures that are said to result from greenhouse gas

emissions in the atmosphere.

 

However, other experts think that rather than finding the mountain

has reduced in height, it may well turn out it has risen.

 

Dr Hugh Sinclair, an expert on the processes of mountain formation

and erosion at Edinburgh University's school of geosciences,

believes it is "extremely doubtful" that Everest would have shrunk.

 

He said: "In 1975, the Chinese survey resulted in a height of

8,848.13 metres, which is pretty precise.

 

"Then in 1999 the US team measured it with GPS at 8,850 metres.

 

"It should really be the mountain's tendency to grow slightly over

time. The Himalayas are uplifting at a rate of about one centimetre

a year due to the collision of the Indian continental plate with the

Asian plate. Basically we have India pushing into Asia at a rate of

about 25 millimetres a year, and this causes the high Himalayas to

rise up in response to that pressure at about ten millimetres a

year, so the overall tendency should be for the mountain range to

grow."

 

Dr Sinclair added: "On a peak like Everest that uplift rate can

never be countered by superficial erosion, which can never remove

that amount of rock.

 

"Really significant rock landslides are the only way it could be

diminished in height, and that is what they are presumably

suggesting the global warming might do.

 

"If you warm up the frosted rock faces, the water can be released

and there is then a tendency for more rock material to slip away.

 

"However, the likelihood of this happening at nearly 9,000 metres is

extremely dubious. At this height you will never get water, as it

will always be ice, and the probability of it being sensitive to

global warming is therefore pretty low."

 

The mountain is named after Sir George Everest, the surveyor general

of India between 1830 and 1843, who embarked on what was known

as "one of the most stupendous works in the whole history of

science", the great trigonometrical survey of India.

 

In 1847 and 1849, surveyors took measurements of some peaks on the

border between Nepal and Tibet, the highest of which was variously

named Peak Gamma, Peak B, and Sharp Peak H. But it was not until

1856 that Sir George's successor, Andrew Scott Waugh, proposed that

at 8,840 metres (29,002ft) Peak XV in the Nepalese Himalayas was the

world's highest mountain.

 

SOURCE: The Scotsman, Edinburgh, "Climate fears, so it's high time

Everest is measured" by JAMES REYNOLDS, ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT

 

URL: http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=96002005