near1 documentation
near1 finds the linear index of the point in an array closest to a specified coordinate.
See also near2, geomask, and local.
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Contents
Syntax
ind = near1(x,xi) [ind,dst] = near1(x,xi)
Description
ind = near1(x,xi) returns the index ind of the point in x closest to xi. If xi is equidistant between two x values, ind corresponds to the first of the two.
[ind,dst] = near1(x,xi) also returns the ditance dst between x(ind) and xi.
Example 1
For this array of x values, which point in the array is closest to xi=51?
x = 10:10:100 xi = 51;
x =
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The index of the x value closest to 51 is:
ind = near1(x,xi)
ind =
5
If you also want to know the distance from x(ind) and xi, get the second ouput from near1:
[ind,dst] = near1(x,xi); dst
dst =
-1
That is, the value x(ind)=50 is one unit lower than the query value xi=51.
What if a query point is halfway between two x values? The way that 55 is halfway between 50 and 60?
ind = near1(x,55)
ind =
5
In the case of multiple equally valid answers, near1 only returns the first valid index.
Example: Climate data application
The near1 function can be useful for finding the row and column of a grid point closest to a location of interest in a gridded climate time series. This example is similar to examples in the documentation for near2 to geomask, but is applied slightly differently.
load pacific_sst % loads example data whos lat lon sst t % displays the size of these variables
Name Size Bytes Class Attributes lat 60x1 480 double lon 55x1 440 double sst 60x55x802 21172800 double t 802x1 6416 double
Those linear arrays lat and lon correspond to the first two dimensions of the 3D SST array. We can use near1 to get the time series of SSTs close to Honolulu, Hawaii (21.3 N, 157.8 W).
row = near1(lat,21.3); col = near1(lon,-157.8);
And the SST time series can be plotted like this. Just remember to use squeeze to get the resulting 1x1x802 array into an 802x1 shape so plot will be able to handle it:
sst1 = sst(row,col,:); plot(t,squeeze(sst1)) axis tight datetick('x','keeplimits') xlabel date ylabel 'temperature \circC'
Just to be sure, verify that the row and column actually correspond to latitudes and longitudes close to Honolulu:
[lat(row) lon(col)]
ans = 21.5000 -157.5000
Yep, that's about as close as we can get to (21.3 N, 157.8 W).
Author Info
This function is part of the Climate Data Toolbox for Matlab. The function and supporting documentation were written by Chad A. Greene of the University of Texas at Austin.