css2c

Converts spherical coordinates (lat/lon) to Cartesian coordinates on a unit sphere.

Prototype

	function css2c (
		lat  : numeric,  
		lon  : numeric   
	)

	return_val [3,dimsizes(lat)] :  float or double

Arguments

Latitudes of the input coordinates, expressed in degrees. This argument can have any number of dimensions. The missing value for lat is the current value of the _FillValue attribute.

Longitudes of the input coordinates, expressed in degrees. This argument can have any number of dimensions, but the number of dimensions and the dimension sizes must agree with those of lat. The missing value for lon is the current value of the _FillValue attribute.

Return value

An array of Cartesian coordinates having first dimension 3 and other dimensions agreeing in number and size with those of the input arrays. The x coordinate values will have a first index of 0; the y coordinate values, a first index of 1; and the z coordinate values, a first index of 2.

If either of the input arrays is double, the output array will be double; in all other cases, the output array will be float.

If any input lat or lon is a missing value, all three of the corresponding Cartesian coordinates returned will have a value calculated in the following way: it will be the value set for the parameter MVL if it has been set (see cssetp for how to set parameter values); or the value of lat@_FillValue if lat is a missing value; or the value of lon@_FillValue if either lat@_FillValue is not set or if the value for lat is not a missing value.

The default value for the MVL parameter is -8.; this is used simply as a flag to verify if a value has been set for that parameter.

Description

css2c converts lat/lon coordinates on a sphere to Cartesian coordinates on a unit sphere. All latitudes and longitudes are expressed in degrees. The point at 0 degrees latitude and 0 degrees longitude is identified with Cartesian coordinate (1.,0.,0.).

This function is in the Cssgrid package - a software package that implements a tension spline interpolation algorithm to fit a function to input data randomly spaced on a sphere.

The general documentation for Cssgrid contains complete examples for entries in the package.

See Also

cssgrid, cssgrid_Wrap, csstri, csvoro, css2c, csc2s, cssetp, csgetp

Examples

begin

;
;  Specify the value to be returned when a missing value
;  is encountered in the input.
;
  missing_val_return = -100.5
  cssetp("mvl", missing_val_return)

  rlat = new((/2,5/),integer)

;
;  Define rlat that contains a missing value.
;
;  In NCL versions 5.2.x and earlier, the "new" function sets a 
;  default missing value integer missing value of -999.
;  In versions 6.0.0 and greater, this value is -2147483647.
;
  imsg = -2147483647     ; In v6.0.0, can use 
                         ; imsg = default_value("integer")
                         ; to get default.
  rlat = (/                                          \
           (/ -89, -45, imsg,  45 ,  89 /),     \
           (/  89,  45,    0, -45 , -89 /)      \
         /)

  rlon = (/                                     \
           (/-179., -90., 0., 90., 179./),      \
           (/ 179.,  90., 0.,-90.,-179./)       \
         /)

; 
;   Convert the lat/lon input to Cartesian coordinates on the
;   unit sphere.  The _FillValue attribute for rval will be
;   set to missing_val_return on return.
;  
  rval = css2c(rlat, rlon)
  print(rval)

; 
;   Extract the x, y, and z coordinates of the Cartesian coordinates
;   as arrays.  
; 
  x = rval(0,:,:)
  y = rval(1,:,:)
  z = rval(2,:,:)

  print(x)
  print(y)
  print(z)
  
;
;  Do the reverse transformation.
;
  sval = csc2s(x,y,z)
  print(sval)

end