In a scifi universe I'm currently writing up, a colony was established on a weird world. strangely, it's a habitable planet with an extremely shallow sea, with an average depth of 4 meters, excluding the occasional 2 km deep rift valley. The planet is also dotted with chains of islands, mostly small piles of sand, the largest island is about the size of Earth's Madagascar Island. Volcanism is rare despite the evidence of a magnetosphere and tectonic activity.
But what would the climate of a world that is nearly all shallow ocean be like? How would the currents work? would it be a sunny tropical paradise or a stormy hell hole? And would it be a good place to put up a beach resort for human colonists?
Specific characteristics of said planet
- 90% the size of the earth
- Gravity of .95 gs
- the surface is nearly 99% ocean
- ~1 Au from its parent star
- said parent star is a little dimmer than our own Sol
- deep open oceans are rare on this planet, with most parts going no deeper than 20 meters
- habitable, complex multicellular life is present, and an atmosphere like Earth's is also present