Monday, June 22, 2015

Mt. Everest has moved 15+ inches to northeast in past 10 years per Xinhua. Tectonic movement of India continues to put enormous pressure on Asian continent squeezing it eastward-USGS

.
6/15/15, "Mt. Qomolangma (Mt. Everest) moves 40 cm northeastward in 10 years," xinhuanet.com/english
 
"LHASA, June 15 (Xinhua) -- Mount Qomolangma [Mt Everest] has moved 40 centimeters
[15.7 in.] to the northeast over the past ten years with its height increasing by three centimeters, the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation said Monday.
 
Monitoring data collected by the department from 2005 to 2015 shows that the mountain has been moving at a speed of four centimeters per year and has been growing by 0.3 centimeters annually.

The Mountain is located on the collision belt for the boundary between the Indian and the Eurasian Plates, where the crustal movements are active. Geographical changes in the area have great influence on the climate, environment and ecology of East and South Asia, experts said.

The administration set a satellite monitoring system on Qomolangma in 2005 and started to observe the movement of the mountain.

Observers with the department found that Mount Qomolangma shifted three centimeters southwestward after the devastating Nepal earthquake on April 25, while the height of the mountain was left unaffected."
...................
...................... 

"Mount Everest, or Qomolangma, also called Chomolungma, the world's highest mountain above sea level at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft), is located in the Himalayas on the Nepal (Sagarmatha Zone)-China (the northern brae in Tingri County of Tibet) border."...
................................ 

"The Himalayas: Two continents collide," usgs.gov


Image caption: "Artist's conception of the 6,000-km-plus (3728 miles) northward journey of the "India" landmass (Indian Plate) before its collision with Asia (Eurasian Plate). Solid lines indicate present-day continents in the Indian Ocean region, but no geologic data exist to determine the exact size and shape of the tectonic plates before their present-day configurations. The dashed outlines for the "India" landmass are given for visual reference only, to show the inferred approximate locations of its interior part in the geologic past. The "India" landmass was once situated well south of the Equator, but its northern margins began to collide against the southward-moving Eurasian Plate about 40 to 50 million years ago (see text)."
 
"The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau to the north have risen very rapidly. In just 50 million years, peaks such as Mt. Everest have risen to heights of more than 9 km (5.6 miles). The impinging of the two landmasses has yet to end. The Himalayas continue to rise more than 1 cm a year -- a growth rate of 10 km in a million years! If that is so, why aren't the Himalayas even higher? Scientists believe that the Eurasian Plate may now be stretching out rather than thrusting up, and such stretching would result in some subsidence due to gravity....
...................
At present, the movement of India continues to put enormous pressure on the Asian continent, and Tibet in turn presses on the landmass to the north that is hemming it in. The net effect of plate-tectonics forces acting on this geologically complicated region is to squeeze parts of Asia eastward toward the Pacific Ocean. One serious consequence of these processes is a deadly "domino" effect: tremendous stresses build up within the Earth's crust, which are relieved periodically by earthquakes along the numerous faults that scar the landscape."...as of 5/22/15. image from USGS

===============================
.................................

Washington Post article containing link to above Chinese State media (Xinhua) article:

6/18/15, "How strong was the earthquake in Nepal? Enough to actually shove Mount Everest." Washington Post, Peter Holley

"Watching from the the other side of the globe, it can hard to fathom the power of a massive earthquake like the magnitude 7.8 tremor that rocked Nepal on April 25, killing more than 8,500 people.

Here's another way to think about it: The quake was so powerful that it physically shoved over the world's highest peak by 3 centimeters, or about 1.2 inches, according to Chinese state media. That data comes from "a satellite monitoring system" that the Chinese government set up in 2005 to observe the movement of the mountain, state media reported.

The mountain is constantly moving, even without earthquakes.

"Monitoring data collected by the department from 2005 to 2015 shows that the mountain has been moving at a speed of four centimeters per year and has been growing by 0.3 centimeters annually," state media said. The mountain's slow-moving journey is caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which forces the ground upward, creating the Himalayas.

The quake didn't affect Everest's height, but it reversed nine months of northeasterly movement in a matter of seconds, according to CNN. It also triggered several deadly avalanches on the mountain that killed 19 and strapped more than 100 others on the peak, bringing a swift end to the 2015 climbing season.

A second quake, which struck Nepal in May with a magnitude of 7.5, killing dozens and unleashing landslides, did not move the mountain, state media reported.

However, to put the mountain's movement into perspective, consider that the region around Kathmandu -- an area 75 miles long by 30 miles wide -- rose by as much as three feet during the earthquake.

“That’s one of the reasons why Kathmandu has so much damage,” Tim Wright, a geophysicist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, told The Washington Post."


 .

.

No comments: