If water flowing over continents in rivers is what concentrates salt in our ocean, would a planet that has always been covered in water just be freshwater? The water is just sitting there, not eroding through salts.
If water flowing over continents in rivers is what concentrates salt in our ocean, would a planet that has always been covered in water just be freshwater? The water is just sitting there, not eroding through salts.
Continents and the surface are just areas of the planet that don’t have water covering them up.
If Earth’s oceans rose only a few miles up, it would be a water planet, but these things would still exist. Including plate tectonics and the circulation of magma / molten core.
Water circulates due to pressure, temperature, and impurities, each having their own positive feedback loop into the system before it finds a balance.
Sure but once a continental plate is flooded, isn’t it by definition an oceanic plate at that point? A continent only exists if it isn’t flooded.
I mean, it’s basically arguing semantics, which was my point. Temperature, sediment, etc. transfer will still occur, and erosion will happen. It would just happen at different time scales.