What would be different about the earth if water was a transparent red color?

Question

Would clouds, vegetation, humans, animals look different? Can you think of any idea's about what would be different and how it would look?

Answer 1

An interesting question.  If the oceans were red; that would mean that the water was absorbing the other wavelengthds of light, and reflecting back the red part of the spectrum.  At present, the ocean absorbs part of the spectrum, and reflects back blue-enriched light (this is part of the reason why the ocean seems blue).

But if the ocean only reflected the red part of thespectrum, it would warm up more.  This would have a dramatic effect on the world's climate.

Answer 2

Great question!! I appreciate your thought and  would love to answer it.

In my opinion there would be a huge impact on earth's atmosphere. To explain what I think, I would like to tell you that red colour lies closer to the infrared rays in electromagnetic spectrum and IR rays are known to carry heat. Thus compared to blue, red colour is expected to carry more heat. Now if water has got transparent red colour then undoubtly it will absorb more heat and the effect would be reflected on atmosphere and the flora and fauna in environment. I can guess following direct effects:

1. There would be changes in appearance of plants and animals since they would require to adapt to the changed environment. One change might be thicker and dark skin in animals.

2. The hotter water would expand more and several land masses would be submerged in water.

3. There would be more eavaporation of water from sea surface and hence changed rain pattern. Tis may again affect the vegetations and forests.

4. Certain regions would have more favourable living conditions than the others. This will result in a large scale uncontrolled migration of population to the favourable locations and a chaotic situation will emerge.

Further if snow also turns red, it would absorb more heat and will melt faster and will add up to the water in ocean and hence more disastrous expansion of water will take place.