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A while ago, I encountered a YouTube and Spotify playlist called "songs for an empty world" by LAIN. The description was especially interesting to me:

Only 250,000 people left. 160 days of sun in a year. Constant rain. Everything's green and overgrown. Welcome to 2131.

I was wondering what a world like this would actually look like. Would our trees and plant life actually survive and thrive with that little sunlight? Would the world become more of a fungal wasteland?

For the sake of this question, let's ignore the issues of flooding or how all that water would evaporate and get back into the sky, etc. I'm more curious if anyone with more botanical/scientific knowledge than I can give some educated opinions on what the biosphere would be like.

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    $\begingroup$ For "sunny days" do you mean "days where there are no clouds"? Because I am fairly sure there are places around the world that do have 160 sunny days, using this definition, in the real world we live in. $\endgroup$
    – VLAZ
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 7:00
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    $\begingroup$ 160 days of sun/year is not little sunlight. It's a boatload of sunlight. If you mean it in a "160/365 days are sunny" kinda way, that's almost one day out of two being sunny all year long. That's way more than where I come from and we survive quite alright. If you mean it as a measure of sunshine duration in very confusing units (it is commonly measured in h/year) that would correspond to 3840 h/year of sunshine duration (assuming your day unit means 24h). The sunniest city in the world is Yuma, Arizona with 4000h/year. 160day/year, however you choose to understand it is A LOT OF SUN. $\endgroup$
    – Barbaud Julien
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 7:09
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    $\begingroup$ You can't have a hard science answer if you dismiss the water cycle. $\endgroup$
    – Kilisi
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 7:54
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    $\begingroup$ To complement @Kilisi's comment, it makes little sense to say a world has 160 days of rain per day. This is falling into the single biome planet bias, an unrealistic, very far from hard-science trope. The closest interpretation is to state this is 160 sun days "on average", but then you're asking for all regions on the planets at once, with ones being still dry deserts and others oceans and lush forests 🔥☀️↔🌧️❄️. It's why I believe you have misused the hard-science tag and actually need something less strict. $\endgroup$
    – Tortliena - inactive
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 8:42
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    $\begingroup$ Also, understand you need to show what research you did before to avoid downvotes here. Here, I'd compare the wettest/darkest cities against these 160 sunny days. If you're living in Europe, you probably know about Ireland's rainy climate. In the USAs you have Florida. In Asia, India is a good start. Africa and South America, almost everything near the equator is worth looking. Regarding pure daylight, check out northern countries like Iceland. You should also check the climate classification, even if only on wikipedia 😊! $\endgroup$
    – Tortliena - inactive
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 9:02

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To have constant rain the Earth would not be able to sustain any life at all on land. It would require temperature high enough to evaporate the rain almost as fast as it falls to keep the water cycling. So if anything evolved on land it would have to be very heat resistant and would have nothing to eat.

You may have life in the water, and it could evolve to any level you want it to.

Consider the Carnian Pluvial Episode as it's the rainiest time on Earth, it lasted 2 million years, but it wasn't constant rain. Constant rain would be a whole other story.

Also 160 days of sun is not consistent with constant rain.

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    $\begingroup$ @L.Dutch "Questions using this tag must include all the information necessary to frame the posited problem. Questions that do not contain all the necessary details or data may be closed as needing more details." Answers can only go as much as the question does. If by your own words the question lacks details and is too broad, don't review answers like it has enough details just to follow one very likely misused tag (compare real-world's climate vs the querent's). $\endgroup$
    – Tortliena - inactive
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 8:21
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    $\begingroup$ @Tortliena, each user is responsible to answer only well asked question. $\endgroup$
    – L.Dutch ♦
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 9:37
  • $\begingroup$ @L.Dutch ok, hard science tag removed as obviously incompatible with the question ... now what? Too late to downvote me again $\endgroup$
    – Kilisi
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 9:40
  • $\begingroup$ @Kilisi L.dutch did not downvote you, I did. I agree that the question is very poorly asked, and is not actually answerable. Which is the reason why your post does not answer it imo. The post could have been a helpful comment. However, as far as I can see, this objectively does not answer the questions, and does not seem like it comes from a place of particular "botanical/scientific knowledge" that OP was asking for, but mostly common sense. (although, again, I agree that it is "the questions' fault"). $\endgroup$
    – Barbaud Julien
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 9:55
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    $\begingroup$ @Kilisi I downvoted because this is, in my opinion, a bad answer. The fact that the answer has to be bad because of the initial question does not make it better in my view. I did not expect it would be hurtful to anyone, I thought that's how downvoting works. I'd take it out but can't change it after 5 minutes EDIT: Oh, wait, actually, I can, let me do that then, if that makes you evening better $\endgroup$
    – Barbaud Julien
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 10:10

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