Lambert Conformal Conic to Geographic Transformation Formulae
This page explains how to convert Lambert Conformal Conic projection coordinates ( N , E ) to their geographic equivalents and vice versa.
Projection parameters
The equations on this page use the following parameters which are specific to the particular projection that is being converted to or from. The correct values for different New Zealand projections can be found in the projections section.
a | Semi-major axis of reference ellipsoid |
f | Ellipsoidal flattening |
![]() | Latitude of first standard parallel |
![]() | Latitude of second standard parallel |
![]() | Origin latitude |
![]() | Origin longitude |
![]() | False Northing |
![]() | False Easting |
![]() | Latitude of computation point |
λ | Longitude of computation point |
N | Northing of computation point |
E | Easting of computation point |
The following equations are divided into three sections:
Projection constants
Several additional parameters need to be computed before transformations can be undertaken (,
,
,
). These parameters are constant for a projection.
where:
and
are obtained by evaluating
using
and
,
,
and
are obtained by evaluating
using
,
and
,
is obtained by evaluating
using
Geographic to Lambert conformal projection
The conversion of geographic coordinates (,
) to projection coordinates ( N , E ) is achieved in several steps. First, determine
and
at the using the latitude of the computation point () and the formulas above. Then evaluate
at the longitude of the computation point (
) using:
The projection northing ( N ) of the computation point is computed using:
Finally the projection easting ( E ) of the computation point is computed using:
Lambert conformal projection to geographic
The conversion of Lambert projection coordinates ( N , E ) to geographic coordinates ( f , l ) is achieved in several steps. First, determine ,
,
,
and
using the following formulas:
The latitude of the computation point needs to be computed iteratively. The first approximation is obtained from:
This initial estimate of
is then substituted into:
This value of should be re-substituted into the above formula until successive values do not change. This is typically achieved after three iterations.
The longitude of the computation point () is determined using: