ST_DistanceSpheroid

Introduction: Return the geodesic distance of A using WGS84 spheroid. Unit is meter. Compared to ST_Distance + ST_Transform, it works better for datasets that cover large regions such as continents or the entire planet. It is equivalent to PostGIS ST_Distance(geography, use_spheroid=true) and ST_DistanceSpheroid function and produces nearly identical results. It provides slower but more accurate result compared to ST_DistanceSphere.

Geometry must be in EPSG:4326 (WGS84) projection and must be in lon/lat order. You can use ST_FlipCoordinates to swap lat and lon. For non-point data, we first take the centroids of both geometries and then compute the distance.

If either geometry is empty, the function returns NULL.

Note

By default, this function uses lon/lat order since v1.5.0. Before, it used lat/lon order.

Format: ST_DistanceSpheroid (A: Geometry)

Return type: Double

Since: v1.4.1

SQL Example

SELECT ST_DistanceSpheroid(ST_GeomFromWKT('POINT (-0.56 51.3168)'), ST_GeomFromWKT('POINT (-3.1883 55.9533)'))

Output:

544430.9411996207