Himalayan Mountains Rising a Few Millimeters a Year, Scientists Say

Mountain climbers be forewarned: Mt. Everest and other peaks in the 1,500-mile-long Himalayan chain are still rising, scientists from the United States and Nepal say.

The 29,029-foot Everest and a few other peaks are rising by one to four millimeters (0.04 to 0.16 of an inch) a year--at most the width of a telephone cord, scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder and the Nepalese government said in a statement.

Some Himalayan mountains have risen a total of half a meter since the last survey was taken in 1847, but erosion caused by rivers in the lowlands may be stripping the entire chain of about 5 millimeters (one-fifth of an inch) in height.

“What is actually happening is that the mountains are going up, and the valleys are going down. There are no rivers eroding the top of Everest,” Colorado geology professor Roger Bilham said in a statement from the university.

Bilham said the survey was not taken to resolve controversies. Mt. Everest’s stature as the world’s highest mountain has been challenged by scientists since a 1987 survey said K-2 may be 29,068 feet high.

The Himalayan chain is squeezed upward as the Indian continent pushes against the Asian continent, and during earthquakes the Himalayas rise more abruptly.

The earthquake that struck in the Himalayan foothills of India in October probably caused an area to pop up several inches.

A major earthquake could cause all of Nepal to rise by half a meter (1.65 feet), Bilham predicted.

Bilham and Michael Jackson of the University of Colorado and the Nepalese survey department took a survey along a road running from India to China and found bulges in the rock that provided evidence for the rise.

In March and April, 14 teams from China, the United States, and Nepal measured convergence of the two continents using satellite signals set up from 44 points in Nepal, China and Tibet.

The measurements are accurate to within the width of a pencil and will be measured again in 1994 to predict where earthquakes may occur.