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As the mountain moves beneath Berg Everest crew
10:40 a.m. EDT Oct 20, 2003
The Berg Everest team is currently on their summit push, slowly working their way up. This season has not been entirely about climbing and skiing though. For one, the Berg team is part of an ongoing weather project started by AdventureWeather and ExplorersWeb. This is our seventh season offering free weather to the Everest region – each season the forecasts, and the major weather companies we work with get more and more honed in on making the reports as accurate as possible.
During this fall season we equipped the Berg team with a miniature weather station that can record several atmospheric conditions like wind speed, humidity, temperature, etc. . .Through the Contact 2.0 dispatching system they’ve been sending the information back to headquarters to be analyzed. This is an early part of the ongoing project of better understanding and forecasting Himalayan weather.
Another project the team is working with involves setting a GPS up at the South Col. This has been done in cooperation with Roger Bilham, a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. To Everest fans, the immediate question that comes up is, “How high is Everest?” There is much debate over this, between the 8848m traditionalists, and the new 8850m measurements.
However, this GPS project has less to do with the absolute height of Everest, and more to do with the movement Everest of the Himalayas in general. Berg has sent us a report from Roger himself about how GPS is being used. An interesting thing is that different parts of Everest are moving at different speeds. Also, with the tectonic movement and resultant earthquakes, Everest actually rises and falls, albeit by millimeters and centimeters – the mountain that is climbed today is in fact slightly taller than the mountain Hillary and Tenzing climbed in 1953.
Roger Bilham: Everest – A Mountain of Science:
Everest- a Mountain of Science
"This year's climb carries out the most recent, and possibly most important of a series of measurements started almost a decade ago on Mt. Everest. The measurements will determine precisely how fast Everest is rising. The rate of rise is linked to the relation between tectonic plate collision and the productivity of earthquakes under the Himalaya.
Moving 1mm a week
As part of the measurements of the height of Everest initiated by Brad Washburn with National Geographic Society backing, four measurements of height were undertaken between 1995 and 1999. In each of the years the precise height and position of a steel bolt on the South Col was measured using GPS methods to an accuracy of roughly 3 mm. This bolt, along with the entire bulk of Everest and the northern Himalaya, is moving towards Beijing at roughly 1 mm each week. More importantly points to the north are moving slightly slower and points to the south slightly faster.
Thus a region from 20 miles south to 20 miles north of Mt. Everest is being compressed by approximately 3/4" each year. Just as a rubber eraser is thickened when squeezed, so too are the mountains thickening. The net effect is that because of the plate tectonic approach of India and Tibet, Mt. Everest is rising by about 1/4"/year. The precise rate of rise tells scientists the thickness of the layer being squeezed, and this is related to the amount of elastic energy in the Greater Himalaya.
60% of the Himalaya due for an earthquake
This stored elastic energy is released during an earthquake. The largest Himalayan earthquakes release as much energy as a 100 Megaton bomb. The most recent of these giant earthquakes occurred near Everest in 1934 (The Bihar/Nepal M=8.2 earthquake). While we do not expect this particular region to experience a similar earthquake for many years, we anticipate that both Sikkim and western Nepal may be overdue for great earthquakes. In fact more than 60% of the Himalaya may be ready for a great earthquake.
We do not know when these large events will occur. We do know, however, that they have occurred in the past, and that they are an inevitable part of the future of the Himalaya. This is not good news for the more than 100 million people of the Himalaya and northern India who live in the threat of these large earthquakes. There has not been a Magnitude 8 earthquake for the past 53 years, and there is thus no general awareness of the seriousness of the seismic threat. Certainly, when one of the 3 or more overdue Richter M>8 Himalayan earthquakes occur there will be a staggering loss of life, and a corresponding economic loss.
The big squeeze
How does this relate to this week's measurements of Everest? After a gap of four years, this year's measurement will indicate Everest's rate of rise to better than 1 mm/year. Together with measurements of the changed positions of points to the north and south of Everest we shall be able to calculate precisely where the earthquakes are occurring beneath the mountain, and the rate at which Everest is being squeezed, that in turn will provide a measure of the rate of accumulation of earthquake energy that will be released in some future earthquake. Calculations show that much of the increase in height is lost during the earthquakes because most of the energy released is indeed elastic. I.e Everest rises between earthquakes and sinks during them.
In fact the measurements have an immediate appeal for mountaineers interested in trivia - the mountain climbed by Mallory and Irvine is slightly taller than the mountain climbed by Hillary and Tenzing (by about a foot or more). Moreover, the mountain being climbed this week may be 15 cm higher that when it was first climbed! This must surely give mountaineers a sense of achievement – each year the rising Mt. Everest provides a newly challenging summit height above sea level.
Details, details
The details of the measurements are that we shall be comparing the height of the South Col relative to the height of Kala Patar, and we shall be comparing the heights of these relative to the heights of Kathmandu, Bangalore and Lhasa to an accuracy of a few mm.
The picture shows Roger Bilham next to the Kala Patar site that is running at 18300' with the summit of Everest towering above Kala Patar, more than 2 miles higher and 3 miles to the East. The South Col site that Wally Berg will re-measure is to the right of the summit (south) and at 26000', 1.5 miles above Kala Patar.'
Image of Roger Bilham next to some scientific equipment courtesy of Berg Adventures.
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