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Weighting Grid-Boxes On Earth: Constant Latitude-Longitude Spacing, This Implies Grid Area Is Everywhere
Weighting Grid-Boxes On Earth: Constant Latitude-Longitude Spacing, This Implies Grid Area Is Everywhere
where a is the Earth radius and ∆λ ≡ λ2 −λ1 . From the sum-to-product identity
α+β α−β
sin(α) − sin(β) = 2 cos sin
2 2
2 φ2 + φ1 φ2 − φ1
=⇒ A = 2a ∆λ cos sin
2 2
= 2a2 ∆λ sin(∆φ/2) cos(φc )
≈ a2 ∆λ∆φ cos(φc ) (∗)
where φc ≡ 0.5(φ1 + φ2 ) is the gridbox central latitude and (∗) is the approxi-
mate Taylor expansion for sine assuming (φ2 − φ1 )/2 is small. For grids with
constant latitude-longitude spacing, this implies grid area is everywhere
proportional to the cosine of the central grid latitude, cos(φc ). Since even
the coarsest grids (say, ∆φ = 10◦ ) will meet only ∼0.1% error (Figure 1), we
never need formula (†).
−2
10
−3
10
percent error
−4
10
−5
10
−6
10
−7
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
gridbox latitude width (deg)