Use of meters_to_degrees is inappropriate in Geospatial_Hurricane_Analysis

[jeffliu-LL]

The calculation of a buffer around a point is currently done using:
airports.geometry = airports.geometry.buffer(meters_to_degrees(8046.72)) #equal to 5 miles in meters

where the function meters_to_degrees is given by:

def meters_to_degrees(distance_meters):
    
    '''https://sciencing.com/convert-distances-degrees-meters-7858322.html (111,139)'''
    
    distance_degrees = (distance_meters / 111194.926644559) # number derived from matlab calculations
    return distance_degrees

This function is an approximation. There is a better way to do distances in geopandas.

The correct way to do it is to convert the geodataframe from a geographic projection (such as epsg:4326) to one that is natively in meters such as (epsg:3857), do the buffering in that CRS, and then convert back to the original projection.

For example (assuming the airports original crs was epsg:4326):

airports = airports.to_crs(epsg=3857)
airports.geometry = airports.geometry.buffer(8046.72)
airports = airports.to_crs(epsg=4326)

This should be done anywhere meters_to_degrees is used.

[aweinert-MIT]

Adding @rearley516 for awareness