Differential Cooling and the Origin of Continents

Abstract

I AM unaware whether attention has been directed to the probable effects of the differential cooling of the earth's surface in relation to the eccentricity of the orbit. The first precipitation of water is likely to have occurred at the pole where the winter falls in aphelion; and for a period of geological time this may have been the only region of the earth cool enough for water to exist in the liquid form. The first rains are not likely to have involved the condensation of more than a small fraction of the water present in the atmosphere. The deluges would spread out from the polar region in a shallow sheet to be evaporated upon reaching latitudes where the temperature was too high for water to lie (the heat of the earth's crust and solar heat being the determining factors). Thus the initial stage in the formation of the hydrosphere will involve the existence of violent shallow currents in one hemisphere during the winter.