Geodetists: USA Not As Tall As We Thought

[MarkBC]

Fascinating!

"The U.S. Is Getting Shorter, as Mapmakers Race to Keep Up"
Alanna Mitchell, NY Times, May 22, 2020

...Parts of the Pacific Northwest will shrink by as much as five feet, and parts of Alaska by six-and-a-half, according to Juliana P. Blackwell, director of the National Geodetic Survey. Seattle will be 4.3 feet lower than it is now...

...The grand recalibration, called “height modernization,” is part of a broader effort within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to establish more accurately where and how the United States physically sits on the planet...

And cutting back on your carbon footprint won't help...

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Maybe we could put 2" lifts in our shoes.
Frank

 

[AWG_Pics]

Fun! Back in the 80's when I worked for a then well known oil company, Amoco, in the Africa and Middle East exploration division, we used the WGS-84 geoid to map all our information to. It was then that I learned how much the geoid mattered. (Untold stories about misplaced drill sites and exploration targets could be inserted here. Expensive mistakes!)

It is fun to think that the earth is what it is, but we humans have been trying for centuries to figure out the best fit mathematical thingy, generally known as an oblate spheroid, but not that exactly, to describe that shape.

I wonder how we will transition older GPS systems, not to mention all the paper maps out there.

 

[MarkBC]

I wonder if there are any Western peaks heights that have been listed as just above 14,000 or 13,000 or 12,000, etc that will drop just below those milestone numbers...?

 

[AWG_Pics]

Mt St Elias is 18,009 ft in elev now. Alaska.

Sunshine Peak is 14,007 ft now. Colorado.

Probably quite a few around 13,000 and 12,000 feet.