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India To Send Surveyors To Find Out If Everest Shrunk From Nepal Earthquake (phys.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the honey-I-shrunk-Everest dept.

OffTheLip writes: Recent scrutiny into the officially recorded height of the world's tallest mountain will lead to a re-measurement. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Nepal in 2015 is being eyed as the reason. India's surveyor general Swarna Subba Rao said, "We will remeasure it. Two years have passed since the major Nepal earthquake and there's doubt in the scientific community that it did in fact shrink." A team will depart once winter passes to take measurements to determine the current height of Everest. "The exercise will require a month of observation and roughly another fortnight for the data to be officially declared," reports Phys.Org. "The earthquake, Nepal's deadliest disaster in more than 80 years, is also believed to have shifted the earth beneath the capital Kathmandu several meters to the south."

2 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Satellites? by hawguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It will take a month of observation then 2 weeks to process the data? I thought this sort of thing was done by satellites these days.

    1. Re:Satellites? by yaznaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The GPS measurement have to be be evaluated against the sea level (that varies across the globe) and corrected for earth's non uniform shape. Here are some additional details on how this correction is done: https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_... The high precision GPS recording have to be taken for a long time and then combined with standard survey methods for building baseline. And that means triangulating and correcting for atmosphere by calculating refraction coefficients by measuring pressure, humidity and temperature (typically done by releasing a weather balloon).

      Plus, there is snow on top that is subject to seasonal shifts.

      The survey will not just measure Mt. Everest height, but also conduct other geological studies.

      I think 1 month is a very efficient time frame for this effort.

      Like climate sciences, these things that appear trivial for casual observers are not. People have spend their entire lifetime specializing in these area's.