hzar (version 0.2-5)

hzar.map.greatCircleDistance: The distance between two points on the Earth's surface.

Description

The distance along a great circle between two points on a spheroid approximation of the Earth's surface.

Usage

hzar.map.greatCircleDistance(lat1, long1, lat2, long2, units = "Km", degrees = TRUE)

Arguments

lat1

The latitude of point 1.

long1

The latitude of point 1.

lat2

The latitude of point 2.

long2

The latitude of point 2.

units

The units of distances returned. Only the case sensitive values "Km" for kilometers, "miles" for miles, and "nautical" for nautical miles are valid.

degrees

Are the latitude and longitude in degrees?

Value

The great circle distance between points 1 and 2.

Details

The Lambert formula is the approximation used to calculate the distance, due to its high accuracy and robustness.

Geometry of Earth R = 6371.009 #Earth radius in kilometers earthSphd.r = 298.257223563 #WGS84 earthSphd.ep= (2*earthSphd.r -1)/(earthSphd.r-1)^2 dLat=p2$lat.rad-p1$lat.rad; dLong=p2$long.rad-p1$long.rad; dLong=ifelse( dLong>pi, dLong-2*pi, ifelse(-dLong>pi, dLong+2*pi, dLong)); mLat=(p2$lat.rad+p1$lat.rad)/2; reLat1=atan((earthSphd.r -1)*tan(p1$lat.rad) /earthSphd.r ) reLat2=atan((earthSphd.r -1)*tan(p2$lat.rad) /earthSphd.r ) cenNum=sqrt((cos(reLat2)*sin(dLong))^2+(cos(reLat1)*sin(reLat2)-cos(reLat2)*sin(reLat1)*cos(dLong))^2); cenDen=sin(reLat1)*sin(reLat2)+cos(reLat2)*cos(reLat1)*cos(dLong); central <- atan2(cenNum,cenDen); lFP <- (reLat1+ reLat2)/2 ; lFQ <- (-reLat1+ reLat2)/2 ; lFX <- (central-sin(central))*sin(lFP)^2*cos(lFQ)^2/cos(central/2)^2; lFY <- (central+sin(central))*cos(lFP)^2*sin(lFQ)^2/sin(central/2)^2; lambertFormulaeD <- ifelse(central==0,0,R*(central-(lFX+lFY)/(2*earthSphd.r)));

References

Lambert formula, published on the web somewhere.

Examples

hzar.map.greatCircleDistance(89.5,60,89.5,390)
# 28.87587
hzar.map.greatCircleDistance(-89.5,-90,89.5,90)
# 19981.56
hzar.map.greatCircleDistance(-89.5,90,89.5,90)
# 19869.99
hzar.map.greatCircleDistance(0,90,89.5,90)
# 9934.996
hzar.map.greatCircleDistance(0,90,0,-90)
# 20015.12
hzar.map.greatCircleDistance(0,90,0,180)
# 10007.56