SPHERELAP Laplacian of a field on the surface of a sphere. DEL2=SPHERELAT(LAT,LON,F) computes the Laplacian of the scalar field F on the surface of the sphere. DEL2 has units of F per inverse meter squared. LAT and LON are vectors specifing an evenly-spaced grid, and F is an array of size LENGTH(LAT) x LENGTH(LON) x M, where M is greater than or equal to one. LAT and LON are in degrees. The radius of the Earth as specified by RADEARTH is used by default. SPHERELAP(...,R) uses a sphere of radius R, in kilometers, instead. Derivatives are computed using the second central difference. [DEL2,DEL2LON,DEL2LAT,DEL2MIXED]=SPHERELAT(LAT,LON,F) also returns the second partial derivative with respect to longitude DEL2LON, with respect to latitude DEL2LAT, and the second mixed partial derivative DEL2MIXED. Together these make up the terms in the Hessian matrix. ___________________________________________________________________ First and last points SPHERELAP can use different boundary conditions in the numerical computation of derivatives for the first and last points. SPHERELAP(...,'periodic') uses a periodic derivative with respect to longitude. This is the default behavior. SPHERELAP(...,'endpoint') uses the forwards / second backwards difference at the first and last longitude, respectively. For both of these options, the endpoint condition is used for differentiation with respect to latitude. SPHERELAP(...,'nans') fills in the first and last values on all four sides of the region with NANs. See VDIFF for more information. ___________________________________________________________________ See also SPHEREDIV, SPHEREGRAD, SPHERECURL, JSPHERE. 'spherelap --t' runs a test. Usage: del2=spherelap(lat,lon,f); del2=spherelap(lat,lon,f,R); [del2,del2lon,del2lat,del2mixed]=spherelap(lat,lon,f,R); del2=spherelap(lat,lon,f,'endpoint'); __________________________________________________________________ This is part of JLAB --- type 'help jlab' for more information (C) 2007--2020 J.M. Lilly --- type 'help jlab_license' for details