Programmatically convert a set of NAD83 GPS-derived coordinates into State Plane Coordinates and NAVD88 orthometric heights using NGS's transformation engine.
domain: geodesy.noaa.gov/web_services/ncat · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Review the NCAT (NGS Coordinate Conversion and Transformation Tool) API docs at https://geodesy.noaa.gov/web_services/ncat/index.shtml.
Check response field metadata at https://geodesy.noaa.gov/api/ncat/meta before building request parsing logic.
Submit lat/lon/ellipsoid-height (or SPC/UTM/XYZ/USNG) inputs; NCAT v2.1 uses NADCON 5.0 for horizontal/3D transforms and VERTCON 3.0 for orthometric height transforms.
Specify the desired output height units explicitly — v2.1 added a units option that is easy to omit and get silently defaulted.
For bulk jobs, use the downloadable NCAT engine (ncat-lib on GitHub under noaa-ngs/ncat-lib) instead of hammering the live API with thousands of single-point calls.
Known gotchas
NCAT's production API still runs on legacy NAD83(2011)/NAVD88 — it is NOT yet transforming to NATRF2022/NAPGD2022; modernized-datum testing happens only on the separate beta.ngs.noaa.gov instance.
NADCON 5.0 and VERTCON 3.0 are named-version dependent — verify the engine version in the API metadata response before trusting sub-centimeter comparisons across tool versions.
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