Question with Rhumb Line Distance from Mapping Toolbox

I am having a trouble with the geographical distance between 2 coordinates from Matlab's Mapping Toolbox. When I included the referenceEllipsoid('World Geodetic System 1984') to make my calculation more precise, the difference between the 2 output values is huge.

%Input Coordinates
startLat=29.7833;
startLon=49.35;
latC=30.9679414132727;
lonC=55.6527719032408; 

%Distance calculation
arclen_check1 = distance('rh',startLat,startLon,latC,lonC);
arclen_check2 = distance('rh',startLat,startLon,latC,lonC,referenceEllipsoid('World Geodetic System 1984'));

Can anyone please explain why the output value between arclen_check1 and arclen_check2 is significantly different. I visitted the Matlab Reference Help but still confused with that.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/map/ref/distance.html?searchHighlight=distance&s_tid=doc_srchtitle

Thanks for your time reading this

Answer 1

[Ryan Klots]

When you do not specify a reference ellipsoid, the distance function computes the distance between two points on the sphere and returns the answer as an arclength in degrees (angular units).

arclen_check1 = distance('rh',startLat,startLon,latC,lonC); % Answer in degrees

https://www.mathworks.com/help/map/ref/distance.html#d117e20163

When you specify a reference ellipsoid, it doesn't make sense to return the answer in angular units. Instead, it returns the distance using the same units as the reference ellipsoid itself.

e = wgs84Ellipsoid
e.LengthUnit % 'meter'

This can be verified by using the deg2km function:

arclen_check2 = distance('rh',startLat,startLon,latC,lonC,e); % Answer in meters
arclen1InMeters = deg2km(arclen_check1) * 1000; % Should be close to "arclen_check2"