What causes oceans and lakes to change colors?

Question

What causes oceans to become green? what causes them to be very blue but sometimes very gray?

What causes lakes to become blue to very brown?

Answer 1

Pollution?

Answer 2

Sky color, clouds, brightness, or non-brightness........shallow water can have the bottom stirred up which will also contribute......

Answer 3

pollution, foreign objects thrown in, people peeing in it, lots of stuff

Answer 4

YES the sky

Answer 5

the sky!!

Answer 6

alot of it has to do with the bacteria and molecules in the water. for example have you seen a mountain lake that is fed by a fresh water spring. Well the water is very clear and so it easliy reflects the sky. It's because the water is pure since it has not been stationary. Buut lets say in a swamp the water sits still allowing bacteria to have time to grow. So oceans are ver yblue when they are cleaner. Thats why the location of the ocean reflects the color. In the carribean the water is relativley clean so it is very clear and blue. It all depends on the sediments and bacteria in the water.

Answer 7

the oceans become green becuz of bacteria and pollution,sometimes the moluecules act up becuz of heavy rainfall or storms..

lakes become brown becuz of heavy rainfall shifting the soil from under water to rise up and causes the brown color

Answer 8

Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow.Some of the sunlight is reflected off the surface of the water, reflecting the color of the sky. Some of the sunlight penetrates the water and is scattered by ripples and particles in the water (this tinges the appearance of the ocean with the color of the particles). In deep water, much of the sunlight is scattered by the oxygen in the water, and this scatters more of the blue light.

Water absorbs more of the red light in sunlight; the water also enhances the scattering of blue light.