NEPAL is sending a team of government-appointed climbers up Mount Qomolangma to remeasure its height, officials said Monday, hoping to quash persistent speculation that the world’s tallest mountain has shrunk.

Four government surveyors will depart today for Qomolangma, which lies on the Himalayan range straddling the border of Nepal and China.

Nepal has so far recognized 8,848 meters as its height, which was first recorded by an Indian survey in 1954. Numerous other teams have measured the peak, although the 1954 height remains the widely accepted figure.

China, which had first measured the height of the mountain in 1975, reassessed the summit in 2005 measuring the height peak’s rock base 8,844.43 meters covered by 3.5 meters snow.

But a heated debate erupted in the aftermath of a massive earthquake in Nepal in 2015, with suggestions the powerful tremor had knocked height off the lofty peak.

Nepal’s Survey Department commissioned a team of surveyors in 2017 to prepare for a Qomolangma expedition in the hope of putting the matter to rest.

“We are sending a team because there were questions regarding the height of Everest (Qomolangma) after the earthquake,” the expedition’s co-ordinator from the Survey Department, Susheel Dangol, said.

Four government surveyors have spent two years fine tuning their methodology for measuring the peak, collecting readings from the ground and training for the extreme conditions they will encounter at the top of the world.

They will ascend the treacherous mountain armed with advanced equipment to collect the remaining data to derive the true height of the peak, officials say.

In May 1999, an American team added two meters to Qomolangma’s height when it used GPS technology to survey the peak. (SD-Agencies)