The world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, moved three centimeters southwest following the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal on April 25, according to Chinese authorities. The three-centimeter movement is around 1.2 inches.

Though the world's highest peak had shifted due to the quake, which killed more than 8,000 people, it did not touch the height of the mountain, which is recorded at 8,848 meters, reported China's National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation.

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The administration used a satellite monitoring system that they had in 2005 at the mountain's peak to observe its movement, according to Chinese state media.

The 40-centimeter movement to the Everest's northeast occurred over 10 years ago, stirring at a speed of four centimeters per year.

Due to the shift, several avalanches took place on and around Everest located at Nepal and China's border. These disasters claimed the lives of thousands of climbers. As a result, mountaineering companies had to call off climbs in that season, according to CNN.

While the April quake shifted Everest's position, a second deadly magnitude 7.5 quake that struck Nepal on May 12 had no effect on the world's highest peak, reported new data.

Quakes in the region is considered common as Nepal rests between two major tectonic plates. One plate bears India, pushing the island northward into Europe and Asia at the speed of two centimeters per year. This process was how the Himalayas was formed, reported Asia One.

While Roger Bilham, a professor of geological science at the University of Colorado said he agrees with China's findings, he suggests that the focus should stray from Everest. Bilham called the highest peak "a lump of uneroded rock that just happens to have survived a little bit higher than all the other rocks in the Himalaya."

"The Everest region was a mere bystander, and was pulled slightly by this movement by a few centimetres south and a little bit down," he added in an e-mail sent to the AFP.

The Chinese data might appear huge, but the recorded movement of Everest over the last decade is small when compared with the shifting around Kathmandu's regions during the quake, according to Live Science.

"Everest is kind of like a distraction from the whole story," according to geologist Richard Briggs from the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado.

The April quake lifted the ground near Kathmandu by about three feet, according to a European data from the Sentinel-1A radar satellite. The quake reportedly damaged more than 5,600 square miles and took the lives of more than 8,000 people.

TagsEverest shifted, Mount Everest, Kathmandu, Nepal, Nepal Earthquake, Nepal avalanches