How high is Mount Everest according to the 2020 official measurement?

Mount Everest is 8,848.86 metres high according to the 2020 official measurement.

China and Nepal announced this jointly agreed elevation in December 2020. The measurement includes the snow and ice cap at the summit, which can change over time, rather than measuring only the underlying rock. Earlier official figures differed partly because of changing methods and uncertainty about the summit ice layer.

Everest lies in the Himalayas on the border between Nepal and China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. In Nepal it is called Sagarmatha, while in Tibet it is known as Chomolungma. The mountain was named in English after George Everest, a nineteenth-century Surveyor General of India, although he had not personally visited it.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first confirmed ascent on 29 May 1953. The extreme altitude creates risks including low oxygen, avalanches, severe cold and rapidly changing weather. Everest is the highest point above sea level, although other mountains are taller when measured from their underwater bases.