Did Nepal Earthquake Change Height of Mt. Everest & Capital City Kathmandu?

Did the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake change Mt. Everest's height and raised Kathmandu to new levels? Based on a satellite's survey of the areas affected by the powerful tremor, it appears Nepal's capital city rose 1-2 meters or 3-6 feet, with some horizontal shifting as well, Mashable said.

"Teams of scientists at several institutions, including the German Aerospace Center, used data from the European Satellite Agency's Sentinal-1 satellite to calculate how the ground shifted both horizontally and vertically during the earthquake and subsequent aftershocks," the site reported. "The scientists compared a satellite pass over the area after the earthquake to data collected in the same region earlier in April, prior to the quake."

The information gathered showed that extensive ground shifting affected an area that was about 60 miles long and 19 miles wide. However, the scientists need to refine their calculations further to get a more precise picture.

In the wake of these findings, there have been speculations regarding the height of Mt. Everest. Did the tremor shorten or increase the height of the world's highest peak?

Experts reportedly opined that "while Kathmandu may have moved, it is unlikely that the height of Mount Everest was affected as it is not directly above the faultline," The Guardian noted.

"The main slip was west of Everest, the mountain was not directly above the fault plane," said physical sciences head at the University of Adelaide, Sandy Steacy. "In addition, the dip of the fault is very shallow so three metres in a horizontal direction doesn't mean much vertically."

Meanwhile, University of Edinburgh professor, Ian Main, who teaches rock physics and seismology, believe that there probably was a small change in the height, but it was too early to make such declarations.

"We will know soon if any detectable height change has occurred, when those working on satellite-based 'synthetic aperture radar' look at the difference in snapshots of the ground surface position before and after the event," he pointed out.

As such, it is still not clear whether the recorded changes are significant enough to require adjustments in current world maps.

If the quake shrank Mt. Everest, the change probably is too minimal for it to be anything less than the world's highest mountain, The Weather Channel noted.

An avalanche on the peak had claimed 18 climbers at base camp in the wake of the earthquake. Mount Everest has since been closed, but will reportedly be reopened by next week, according to CBC News.

The recent disaster on the peak started to ignite renewed calls to put a halt to expeditions to the mountain's summit, "to give the mountain a rest for a few years," as Edmund Hillary, one of the first to reach the top of Mt. Everest, said in 2003.

In the past years, the coveted summit has become dirty and has "killed more people than ever before" in the past two years, as noted by The Washington Post.

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