Everest getting ‘taller’ by 15-50m due to erosion from nearby river gorge
Chinese and British geologists have found out that the formation of a network of river gorges 75km northeast of the Mount Everest has led to the world’s highest mountain and its closest neighbours in the Himalayas ‘having grown’ by 15-50m over the past 100,000 years, TASS reports
According to scientists, this growth – about 2mm per year – is well recorded using GPS systems. It is reported that Mount Everest and its neighbouring peaks continue to ‘grow’ in height due to ‘isostatic rebound’ which is raising them up faster than erosion is wearing them down.
In the case of Mount Everest, as British and Chinese geologists discovered, something similar happened in the recent geological past as a result of changes in the course of two mountain rivers: the Kosi and the Arun. In the past, they were parts of two different river networks, but 90-100 thousand years ago they merged into a single whole, leading to the formation of a new network of river gorges and accelerated the destruction of rocks northeast of Chomolungma (meaning ‘Goddess Mother of the World’).
The depth of the gorges in the common river network of the Arun and the Kosi increases by about 5-10mm every year in different parts of the course of these rivers under the influence of water erosion. As a result, the pressure on the mantle gradually weakens and Mount Everest and the neighbouring highest peaks of the Himalayas grow annually by about 2mm as a result of an ‘isostatic rebound’.
