The Nepal government is considering relocating the base camp of Mount Everest as global warming and human activity is making the current location unsafe, a senior official said here on Friday.
Surya Prasad Upadhyay, director of Nepal’s tourism department, said the current base camp, located at an altitude of 5,364 meters on the Khumbu glacier, where more than 1,500 people gather every climbing season, is increasingly thin due to the effects of global warming. The glacier is becoming unsafe. Told.
He said during an informal meeting of the department, officials discussed relocating the base camp of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, from its present location.
However, no decision has been taken in this regard yet and the new location has not been identified, he said.
Upadhyay said the matter had come up during an informal discussion during a meeting of the department and a decision has not been taken yet.
Periodic research has warned that glaciers close to the summit of Everest are thinning at an alarming rate.
Himalayan glaciers contribute significantly to water resources for millions of people in South Asia.
In February, researchers in Nepal warned that the highest glacier on top of Mount Everest could disappear by the middle of this century as the 2,000-year-old ice cap on the world’s tallest mountain is thinning at an alarming rate.
The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), citing a latest research report here, said that since the late 1990s, there has been a lot of snowfall on Everest.
ICIMOD said the Everest Expedition, the most comprehensive scientific expedition to Everest, conducted trailblazing research on glaciers and the alpine environment. A recent article published in the journal Nature Portfolio reports that the ice on Everest is thinning at an alarming rate.
It has been estimated that the ice in the South Kol Glacier, located at an altitude of 8,020 meters, is thinning at a rate of about two meters per year, the report said.
In December 2002, China and Nepal announced that the world’s tallest peak was now 86 cm tall when they re-measured Mount Everest at 8,848.86 m, six decades after India conducted the previous measurement in 1954.
The revised height of Mount Everest ended a decades-long dispute between the two neighbors over the height of the world’s tallest mountain, which straddles their shared range.
The exact height of Mount Everest has been disputed ever since a group of British surveyors in India announced the height of Peak XV to be 8,778 meters in 1847.
Mount Everest stands on the border of China and Nepal and is climbed by climbers from both sides.
Mount Everest is known as Sagarmatha in Nepal while in China it is called Mount Komolangma, the Tibetan name for the highest peak in the world.