Climate Zones from Topography

Topography looks especially nice if the mountains are covered by snow. However, the snow line depends on the latitude, so it is not possible to construct a color table with snow that is suitable for the whole Earth. But it is possible to scale the topography with latitude.

Here is an empirical formula for this (only for land, not oceans)

adjusted_altitude = altitude / 2 + 2500 * ( abs(latitude/90) / (pi/2) )

or, with cartesian coordinates:

adjusted_altitude = altitude / 2 + 2500 * ( abs(asin(Z/Zmax)) / (pi/2) )

 In Paraview on a unit sphere, the formula for the calculator filter looks like this:

altitude/2 + 2500 * ( abs(asin((coordsZ+1)/2)) / acos(0))