You have several options. The first question is: do you really need the index, or could you use a vector of logicals, e.g. for indexing something else. Look at the following; we want to extract all volumes associated with temperatures that are closest to a ref value:
>> temp = [-15.3, 0.2, 15.2, 30, 45.3];
>> volume = [4, 7, 28, 35, 20] ;
>> ref = 27.2 ;
>> dif = abs(temp-ref)
dif =
42.5000 27.0000 12.0000 2.8000 18.1000
>> min(dif)
ans =
2.8000
>> match = dif == min(dif)
match =
0 0 0 1 0
>> idx = find(dif == min(dif))
idx =
4
Now you can extract the corresponding volume with either the vector of logicals (which avoids using find()) or the index.
>> volume(match)
ans =
35
>> volume(idx)
ans =
35
This is one "vector" way to achieve what you want; without all the extra steps, this reduces to:
>> dif = abs(temp-ref) ;
>> volume(dif == min(dif))
ans =
35
