The earthquake that devastated Nepal and left thousands of people dead shifted the earth beneath Kathmandu by up to several metres south, but the height of Mount Everest likely stayed the same, experts said on Tuesday. The massive 7.8-magnitude quake on Saturday was the Himalayan nation’s deadliest disaster in more than 80 years, killing more than 4,300 people and causing massive destruction.
According to early seismological data obtained from sound waves which travel through Earth after an earthquake, the ground beneath the Capital Kathmandu may have moved about three metres southward, said University of Cambridge tectonics expert James Jackson. His analysis was similar to that of Sandy Steacy, head of the physical sciences department at the University of Adelaide. “It’s likely that the earthquake occurred on the Himalayan Thrust fault, a plate boundary that separates the northern moving Indian sub-continent from Eurasia,” said Steacy. “It would be simplistic to say that Kathmandu was relocated by three metres,” he said.
“There may have been three metres of slip on the fault at the earthquake nucleation point at 15 kilometres depth. But this dies out in all directions, including upwards to the surface.” It remains unclear whether the shifts may be large enough to necessitate adjustments to high-precision world maps. While Kathmandu moved, it is unlikely that the height of Mount Everest — the highest peak in the world — changed more than a few millimetres, with the mountain not directly above the faultline. “The main slip was west of Everest, the mountain was not directly above the fault plane,” said Steacy.