PARIS, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- Surveyors from France's Department of Haute-Savoie said on Thursday that Mont Blanc has shrunk by 2.2 meters since 2021, and its new official height is 4,805.59 meters.
Speaking to the French news channel BFMTV, Jean des Garets, the department's chief geometer, explained that the decline could be the result of lower precipitation during summer.
"Mont Blanc could very well be much taller in two years," he added, referring to the next biannual measurement in 2025.
Another member of the measuring team, Denis Borel, asked people not to draw "hasty" conclusions and blame the decline on the melting of glaciers due to global warming.
Borel told French television TF1 that it would take approximately 50 years of measurement to be able to decide the role global warming plays at an altitude of 4,800 meters.
The surveyors of Haute-Savoie have carried out measurements of Mont Blanc every two years since 2001. In 2021, Mont Blanc's summit was recorded at 4,807.81 meters. ■