Posted on 01/26/2005 8:23:02 AM PST by presidio9
It got bigger only recently, but now it may be shrinking. What on earth is happening to Mount Everest?
News reports from China yesterday said there was official concern that the top of the world's tallest mountain is getting lower and melting glaciers caused by global warming may be to blame.
A scientific team is to be sent to the mountain known in Chinese as Mount Qomolangma, or Goddess Mother of the World to remeasure its height, according to the state-run newspaper China Daily .
But Everest was last measured in 1999, and found to be higher than previously thought. A team of scientists supported by National Geographic Magazine and Boston's Museum of Science was able for the first time to operate Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite equipment from the summit, and thus take the most precise and authoritative measurements ever. They came up with a revised elevation of 29,035ft, seven feet higher than the previously accepted figure. That had been set in 1954 by the Survey of India after picking the mean of 12 altitudes determined from 12 different survey stations around the mountain.
Now, however, the Chinese think the summit may have got lower and, according to China Daily , the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, working with the Chinese national women's mountaineering expedition, will use radar and GPS equipment to remeasure the peak.
The newspaper said a recent survey found the summit of Everest had dropped by more than four feet, because ofmelting glaciers resulting from global warming.
Nepalese Sherpas who often climb the peak have reported seeing widespread evidence of snowlines receding. And in 2002, a team of climbers sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme found signs that the landscape of Mount Everest had changed significantly since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first conquered the peak in 1953.
The team found that the glacier that once came close to Hillary and Norgay's first camp had retreated three miles, and a series of ponds near Island Peak so-called because it was then an island in a sea of ice had merged into a long lake.
Roger Payne, the sports and development director at the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA), and one of the expedition's leaders, said it was clear that global warming was emerging as one of the biggest threats to mountain areas. "The evidence of climate change was all around us, from huge scars gouged in the landscapes by sudden, glacial floods to the lakes swollen by melting glaciers," he said.
He added that the observations of local people who lived on the lower slopes of the mountain were even more telling. The president of the Nepal Mountain Association told the expedition that he had seen significant changes over the past 20 years in the ice fields, and that these changes appeared to be accelerating.
The expedition found that climatic changes had caused problems for residents of the area. A massive flood caused by water melted from the glaciers had wiped out old wooden bridges, which had to be replaced with higher, stronger metal ones to reduce the possibility of damage from future floods.
Everest sits on the borders of Tibet (occupied by China) and Nepal. Its name in English comes from Sir George Everest, the Surveyor-General of India, who was the first to produce detailed maps of the subcontintent including the Himalayas, and first calculated the great peak's height in 1852.
Since Hillary and Norgay first made it to the top, more than 1,300 people have climbed Everest, from either the Nepalese or the Tibetan side. At least 175 climbers have died in the attempt.
there is not more overall forest in the eastern united states than when the pilgrams landed, remember we had to make roads, towns, cities, farms, industrial places, etc.... those all took up forest. That's ok though, needed to happen. I mean, now we have sectioned off places that we call a "national forest".... however back then, it was nearly all forest.
Why do you suspect that? I am not really even active on this website, I decided to jump in on this topic because it is a matter of what I do and study everyday.... well far sider, are you a geologist? even a naturalist? Sorta insulting that people will discredit my job because I have comments about the Earth and a mountain to post.
I'm just a chemical engineer, but even I know you can't make a legitimate comparison between Venus and Earth, just because both planets have CO2 in their atmospheres.
And yes it is likely that there are more trees now than when the pilgrims landed. The indians did not have ways to control the massive forest fires and grass fires that frequently used to burn across the plains. And they also didn't have Arbor Day as far as we know. Stick around FR awhile and maybe you will learn a few things.
Walk up Over the Khumba Icefall...keep going up the Western Cwm until to you reach Camp Three. Then scale OVER Lhotse, turn around, and snap the picture, :o)
BTW....what a great picture.
When Mallory saw that view, he turned around and started looking for another way up.
You've seen pictures from the south, then from the north and now this great shot from due east.
Remember the "smaller" mountain you saw peaking behind the others?
Well...now that's to the left in this newest picture and it is, indeed, Mighty Everest.
Knock me over with an egg roll!
I would've never guessed.
Where they standing up or setting down when they took their measurement and where did they get a tape that long?
I crack up every time. It is so Toooooo the point. MRN
Your picture proves that it is not global warming, but global wind-ing that is making the mountain shorter. We must take immediate action to reduce the unregulated winds around the world, look at the damage potential.
I don't get it. The "east" is the Kangshung face (northeast, anyway).
YIKES! That's a view from due west looking east.
Check out the satellite photo at # 131.
| Hindu pilgrims walk on a snow-covered pathway on the route to Vaishno Devi, 59 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Jammu, India, Friday, Jan. 28, 2005. Snowfall in the Himalayan ranges has lowered temperature across northern India. (AP Photo/Channi Anand) |
Oh my goooddnneessss! What a Shot! {and the Chinese is so helpful}
Seriesly, those mountain ranges are hugh!
All your mountain ranges are belong to me!
Now that sat shot is VERY impressive. I hate to ask stupid questions all the time, but are those all glaciers?
Thanks, eddie.
[in best John Kerry voice] "Yes and no".
All those you see are the glaciers and their valleys.
I think this picture was shot in infrared so you are seeing the area beneath the snow.
Now the big thing that kind of looks like a blown out volcano just right of center is the Everest complex.
Mount Everest proper is the bigger peak on the left of the complex with the 3 lines coming together like a pyramid. The flat surface of it that is running on the left is the North Face (see the "brownish" photo I posted earlier) which is the Tibetan side. The long Glacier/Valley running off to the top left part of the picture is the Rongbuk glacier. Until 1953, this was the way everyone tried to scale Mt. Everest (Nepal then being "forbidden" to foreigners.... they all failed)
Now...look to the "Bowl" behind (to the right of the Everest pyramid in this picture)
That is the "Western Cwm". Cwm is the Welsh word for "valley" and was so named by George Mallory who was lost on the mountain in 1924 and the man who answered "Because it is there." when asked why scale Mt. Everest. BTW...his frozen body was found at around 26,000 ft. in 1999. His partner, "Sandy" Irvine has yet to be found. But I digress.
The two other mountains that make up the Everest Complex and surround the Western Cwm are Lhotse and Nuptse.
Nuptse sits across from Everest the opening of the horseshoe shaped bowl.
Lhotse is at the top of the bowl and connects to Everest at what is called the "South Col".
The South Col is a flat area at over 26,000 ft. (The Death Zone) and is the location of "Camp Four", the final resting place before the final assault to the top of the mountain.
This route through the "Bowl" of the Western Cwm is called the Southern Route and was pioneered in the British Expedition of 1953 in which Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first confirmed people to reach the summit and return. (Romantics like me wish to believe that Mallory made it to the top and died on his way down)
The route begins at the Khumba Icefall which, if it were running water, would be rapids. But instead is huge house sized boulders of ice that shift as the glacier runs "rapidly" downhill. Most deaths on Everest expeditions are at the Icefall.
Then you go up the valley, half-way up Lhotse to curve up to the left over the Geneva Spur to the South Col and then to the top.
Simple. ;o)
Wow. Simple...
I'm going to print the sat pic, and go over your very detailed explanation. This is going to help my 67 year old brain keep those neutron synapsis firing. I hope. Thanks!
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