Every latitude, longitude, ellipsoid height, and orthometric height in the United States is about to change. That is not hyperbole — it is NOAA's National Geodetic Survey's own framing for the modernized National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), which replaces NAD 83 and NAVD 88 with four new terrestrial reference frames — NATRF2022 for North America — and a new geopotential datum, NAPGD2022. NGS says existing coordinates "will change by as much as four meters" [1].
Why the old datums have to go
NAD 83 was a triumph of 1980s geodesy, but its origin point is misaligned from Earth's actual center of mass by roughly 2.2 meters [2]. NAVD 88, the vertical datum most US elevations hang off, carries a bias of about half a meter and a tilt of roughly one meter from coast to coast [2]. GPS-era measurement exposed both problems decades ago; the modernized NSRS finally fixes them at the foundation.
The new frames are also time-dependent: they account for plate motion and land subsidence rather than pretending the continent holds still [3]. For anyone doing repeat surveys, monitoring infrastructure, or reconciling decades of data, that is the deeper conceptual shift — coordinates will come with an epoch, not just a datum.
The timeline, as of now
- Components of the modernized NSRS are rolling out on NGS's beta site (beta.ngs.noaa.gov) through 2026 [2].
- A Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee approval vote on NATRF2022 was scheduled for February 2026, with broader approval activity expected mid-2026 [2][4].
- State real-time networks are planning cutovers: Iowa's IaRTN, for example, plans a mid-to-late-2026 transition with dual NAD 83 / NATRF2022 mount points during the changeover [4].
- The deadline for submitting geodetic survey projects under the current system is January 13, 2027 [2].
What working GIS professionals should do
First, inventory where datums actually live in your stack: layer CRS definitions, geodatabase feature classes, survey control sheets, CAD seeds, and any hard-coded EPSG codes in scripts. Second, watch your software vendors — ArcGIS, Autodesk, Global Mapper, and the rest will all need updates to support the new frames and transformation grids [3]. Third, start talking to data partners now about epochs: the moment one agency publishes NATRF2022 data while another stays on NAD 83, every join and overlay in between becomes a transformation question.
And a note close to home: NAPGD2022 replaces a leveling-based vertical datum with one built on a gravimetric geoid model. The concept this site is named for is about to become the backbone of every official elevation in the country.