NAD83 is named for the earth model that it’s referenced to, the North American Datum of 1983. It’s optimized for North America at the expense of its usefulness in other parts of the world. We run into it frequently in our work because it’s the GCS that many important projected systems are built on (think UTM and Albers). Because it is so widely accepted, it has stuck around for a long time even though more “accurate” systems have been published.
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