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.
I'm with ya man. If it'll just drop 2 more feet,I think it's doable!
There has got to be a "Smilin' Bob" Enzite comercial in there somewhere.
Holy crap! That's 13-thousandths of one per cent! Now I have to buy a new world atlas!
I have a hot tip for C. Little: there's a guy named Burquet (sp? the original I have from him has a smudge on it) in Texas who has the straight dope about global warming and the original typed documents to prove it. Bill can be reached through a guy named Lockhart or is it Rather?
True. THERE IS NO GLACIER AT THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT EVEREST!
Where did all that white stuff in all the photos come from?
And if it blows off almost as fast as it falls, who can possibly tell?
Isn't that Nuptse in the front with Lhotse behind?
I am a geologist, and the answer to this issue is not tectonics. For the last 50 million years the Indian plate has been ramming below the Eurasian plate at a rate of a few centimeters a year. This continues today, and the whole Tibetan plateau is still rising, including Mt. Everest. The issue is not with the solid rock of the region, but rather with frozen water in the valleys of these mountains in glaciers. This article is hinting at the fact that the elevation that can get above the freezing point of water has risen near the mountain in the recent past. This leaves flowing water at higher points of the mountain to erode rock little by little.
No one knows for sure about global warming, I know I don't. The trend in the literature in the past few years has become overwhelmingly in favor of the warming trend. Fact: the Earth IS in a warming trend right now. The dispute is over how much humans are influencing this trend.
Science is something that needs to looked at objectively. I wish everyone can do this, but the U.S. is not an overall scientifically literate nation. That's just the way it goes, there are enough folks out there who just don't care about science, and that is quite understandable. How the arguement of global warming has taken political sides is absurd, why are the proponents of the theory considered mainly liberal? Why are those against it mainly conservative? Shouldnt be that way. Before anyone takes a stand on EITHER side, please read journal entries and any other published literature that will really give valuable insight to the processes at work in global warming. You may be wondering: 'Well, I don't even understand, how CAN the Earth be warming?' or "What happens in Earth's systems that can cause the warming?" These questions will be answered by reading valid literature on the subject. When it comes to scientific issues, only informed opinions have any validity. One cannot simply say, "Global warming is false." or "Global warming is true." There needs to be real reasons and process that you can explain to people about how you arrived at your opinion.
I have one model: Venus. With a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide, surface temperatures reach 850F+. The carbon dioxide induces the 'greenhouse effect', which is a factual phenomenon.
It's empirically observable that the glaciers are melting.
For example, older photos of Everest clearly show the Khumbu Glacier spewing snow and ice for many miles south of Everest itself, not quite to Lobuche but far enough to show a difference. Now that glacier is mostly covered with dirt, rocks, and debris, not snow almost immediately after leaving the Icefall.
Also the Khumbu Icefall has pulled back many hundreds of meters, according to mountaineers who've been there over the years (a simple viewing of the Hillary expedition films also shows this to be true).
Clearly something is happening to melt the glacier, and it's not atmospheric cooling.
But in lieu of an accurate 10,000 year temperature sampling, I don't think any of this is caused by the puny and microscopic human race.
After several minutes, I still can't figure out what that photo is in post #1.
It doesn't look like Nupste from any eastward angle, it's not bulky enough.
Nor does the rear mountain look like Everest, that west (left) ridge is just too steep and sharp.
To the extreme right is something that could be Lhotse Shar, but it's way too small. And then where's the Lhotse Ridge?
If it's any combination of Nuptse, Lhotse, and Everest, it's from the weirdest camera angle I've ever seen, or with some odd lens effect. The hill in the foreground is simply too close to the "Everest" massif, on the opposite side of the valley.
I've been there twice, and it doesn't resemble any photo I've taken or seen before.
So the Chinese are claiming that a glacier covers the top of Everest??
Can't wait for their explanation of how it got up there; negative gravity???
Well yes, I know this about the glaciers, and it sure isn't atmospheric cooling no. So yes, as I said... global warming IS happening, and the question remains "what effect have humans had on this rate?" We may not be having that much of an effect, no... but ya know the thing is, we just don't know. And we also don't accurately know the lag time it takes for the atmosphere to catch up to the additional carbon dioxide. It only took a 6 degree world drop in ave. temperature to create the last Ige Age.... if we have possibly risen the temp. 1 degree in 100+ years, that can't be a good thing.
Truth seems to be that the warming issue is just a fad. Remember the hole in the Ozone?... that was paramount in its day.... humans responded and adjusted CFC use, now the hole is shrinking and the entire interest in the issue has waned. I remember a lot of folks doing the same thing back then: "No way, what a load of crap, hole in the ozone, etc." Well it was true, and all we had to do was adjust a little and the problem was essentially solved for now. Same with global warming, we may find out that we need to get with reality and cut back on some things, and once we do this the issue will fade away as progress is made.
First, I could care less about the mountain. I do believe past measurements have been off, and now that GPS units are out (go geocache!), we can measure height to millimeters. (Some of the most precise units come from coastal research facilities and tectonic boundries monitored by the USGS where changes need to be measured in very very small amounts, cool stuff!) 21,000?... over 29,000 feet... but really the relief isn't anywhere near that much, the plateau is so darn high itself.
Our atmosphere is 78% Nirtogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% argon and 0.1% a combination Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and other gases. Humans are incapable of producing enough Carbon Dioxide to perceptibly change the composition of our atmosphere.
As for global warming/not-warming, I aim to read Crichton's book pretty soon. I heard him being interviewed and will trust his take on it.
On Everest's height, there's clearly some sort of measurement problem. No way on earth does tectonics account for a 30 foot (10 meter) difference in some of the measurements.
Placing devices on the summit will clearly affect readings, and that's what they did in 1999 (there's an expedition DVD out there, I watched it just a few weeks ago). Newer studies have placed the GPS just below the summit on the windscoured Bishop's Ledge. How far below the summit is that? They don't precisely know, because the summit is always covered with snowpack.
So I think one major problem with accuracy is that they don't exactly know where the "true summit" actually is. Measuring snowpack is not going to produce precise year-to-year accuracy.
"Humans are incapable of producing enough Carbon Dioxide to perceptibly change the composition of our atmosphere."
Get with it, by "it" I mean reality.
I've been using this example for at least 10 years with econuts: fly across the U.S. during daylight hours and look out the window. Then honestly convince yourself that the human species is capable of destroying the entire global environment.
We are gnats by comparison to planet Earth.
Good post, yeah there is no way tectonics will result in a 30 foot difference in so short of a timespan, tectonics happen so slowly. Perhaps a 6-8 foot increase in 30 or 40 years, but even that number is pushing it.
I should check that DVD out, would really like to see that. Have you seen the IMAX film Baraka?... it's now on DVD, some just incredible camera work in there, some Tibetan shots too.
Yes we are gnats, but we are almost 7 billion gnats. We ARE planet Earth. Perhaps for 10 years those econuts have laughed at what you said too. You think we haven't seriously altered the Earth already??? Most of it isn't anything bad, but really answer yourself this... fly across the US during daylight, and try to imagine what it would look like WITHOUT the human race down there. The plains would no longer have the characteristic quilt pattern, forest would cover from New York to South Carolina... and I mean COVER it. Forest forest forest forest, non stop. That's how it was when we arrived a few hundred years ago here. Drainage patterns, ecosystems, the atmosphere, etc etc, we have altered everything you can imagine and then some. Not that I am really complaining, just noting it. Read some of Carl Sagan's stuff, he was great at making those sort of illusions.
The Venetian atmosphere is 97% Carbon Dioxide. If we somehow managed to DOUBLE the CO2 in our own, it would still make up 0.1% of the total.
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