LATLON2UV is the jOceans module of jLab.

 LATLON2UV  Converts latitude and longitude to horizontal velocity.
 
    CV=LATLON2UV(NUM,LAT,LON) where NUM is the data in DATENUM format
    and LAT and LON are the latitude and longitude in degrees, outputs the
    complex-valued velocity CV=U+SQRT(-1)*V in cm/s, computed using the 
    first central difference.  
 
    NUM is a column vector or a matrix of the same size as LAT and LON.  
    LAT and LON are matices having SIZE(NUM,1) rows.  CV is the same size
    as LAT and LON. NANs in LAT or LON become NAN+SQRT(-1)*NAN.
   
    LATLON2UV computes the velocity components from the distance travelled
    across the surface of the sphere and the heading, taking account of 
    the sphericity of the earth.
 
    The first and last points must be treated differently, as the central 
    difference is not defined there.  At the first and last point we use,
    respectively, the first forward and first backward difference.  
 
    The radius of the earth is given by the function RADEARTH.
 
    [CV,CA]=LATLON2UV(...,'acceleration') also returns CA, a measure of the
    complex-valued acceleration based on the difference between the first
    forward difference velocity and the first backward difference velocity.
    The units of acceleration are centimeters per inverse second squared.
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    Cell array input / output
 
    LATLON2UV returns cell array output given cell array input.  
 
    That is, if NUM, LAT, and LON, are all cell arrays of length K, 
    containing K different numerical arrays, then the output will also be 
    cell arrays of length K.  
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    Difference algorithm
 
    By default, LATLON2UV uses a first central difference algorithm which 
    is defined to be the average of a forward and a backward difference.
 
    CV=LATLON2UV(...,'forward') instead uses a first forward difference. 
    Velocity is computed based on the great circle distance and bearing 
    from each point to the next point.  
 
    CV=LATLON2UV(...,'backward') instead uses a first backward difference.  
    Velocity is computed based on the great circle distance and bearing 
    from each point to the previous point.  This is equivalent to the first 
    forward difference computed backward in time.
 
    The first forward and first backward difference can be thought of as 
    giving the Cartesian velocities of a departing and arriving particle,
    respectively.
 
    Note that acceleration is not output when the 'forward' or 'backward'
    algorithms are specified, as acceleration is computed as a part of the 
    first central difference operation.
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    Parallelization
 
    LATLON2UV(...,'parallel') with cell array input parallelizes the 
    computation using a PARFOR loop.  This requires that Matlab's Parallel
    Computing Toolbox be installed, and is useful for very large datasets.
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    See also XY2LATLON, LATLON2XY, UV2LATLON.
 
    Usage:  cv=latlon2uv(num,lat,lon);
            [cv,ca]=latlon2uv(num,lat,lon);
 
    'latlon2uv --t' runs a test.
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    This is part of JLAB --- type 'help jlab' for more information
    (C) 2004--2015 J.M. Lilly --- type 'help jlab_license' for details