Nepal Earthquake Shrank Mount Everest, Lifted Areas Near Kathmandu 3 Feet

Sean Breslin
Published: April 30,2015




 

Nepal's massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake transformed the land that was shaken by the natural disaster, pushing areas near the city of Kathmandu higher in elevation and making Mount Everest slightly shorter.
It won't be enough to unseat Everest as the world's tallest peak, but according to studies performed after last weekend's temblor, the mountain is now an inch shorter than before the quake. On the other hand, some locations just outside Nepal's capital city of Kathmandu were lifted 3 feet higher than before the tragic event, the study also found.
These findings were discovered by Europe's Sentinel-1a radar, which passed over the affected areas and scanned the differences in terrain, compared to previous scans before the disaster. The result is a beautiful map where each 1-inch shift in the land is represented by a bright color. As you can see below, the quake caused nearly the entire region to shift.
(MORE: Baby Rescued From Rubble 22 Hours After Quake)

Kathmandu is located at the bottom-center of this scan.
(ESA SEOM InSARap Study – Norut/PPO.labs/Univ Leeds)

The colorful map that results from these scans is called an interferogram, BBC.com reported. The maps will be refined in the coming days, but the initial scans give scientists a chance to map the damage and landslides created by the quake, the report added.
Tim Wright, geophysicist at the University of Leeds in the U.K., told Live Science that the region lifted by the earthquake was some 75 miles long by 30 miles wide. The biggest lift occurred just 10 miles outside of Kathmandu, he added, which contributed to the widespread damage in the city.
Geoscience research consortium UNAVCO confirmed the 1-inch shrink in Everest to Live Science, explaining that the mountain's slump occurred when the crust relaxed in areas north of the epicenter when the Earth released strain following the quake. On the other hand, the report added, the Himalayas are rising about four-tenths of an inch every year, so the deficit won't last long.
More than 6,000 people were killed and at least 11,000 were injured when the large earthquake struck on Saturday, collapsing hundreds of buildings and forever transforming poorly-built areas of Kathmandu and surrounding towns.
MORE: Images of the Nepal Quake