Spherical Coordinates for Arctic Ocean Flows

The failure of the conventional geographic coordinates at the poles is a major inconvenience in the study of Arctic Ocean flows. We propose a geometrically elegant solution that consists in rotating the geographical system, thus moving the singularities away from the poles. After presenting the various methods—matrix, axis angle, Euler angles, quaternions—for describing rotations in 3-space, we introduce the new approach, and we outline an application to the Transpolar Drift current.