After Wenhong Li moved from China to the United States for graduate school in atmospheric science in 1998, she started focusing on the Amazon basin, where 30 percent of Earth's species live in a steamy environment that influences the entire planet's climate.
By the time she finished her post-doctoral training and began a stint as an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Tech, the planet's largest contiguous rain forest had become what Li terms a "superhot" research area. But the various competing climate models couldn't agree on whether or not global climate change would make the Amazon basin's vast rain forests "die back."
Her research since then suggests the key is the "hydrological cycle," a natural crucible within which growing plants exhale moisture to create the very rain that sustains them. Both her extensive computer studies and ground reports are beginning to paint a picture of change that could indeed convert the Amazon's thick jungles into sparser savannahs.
A warming tropical Atlantic Ocean to the north seems to be reducing moisture movements into the Amazon. Meanwhile, changes in the jet stream seem to be blocking southern cold fronts from arriving at the right time. The results are delayed rainy seasons and other moisture transport disruptions.
"In recent years this area has experienced more severe droughts," she said. "When the climate is dry, and there is already a lot of deforestation, that can pump a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So we are pretty concerned about that."
Now in her first faculty job, at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, Li will be using a new computer cluster she's purchasing and a supercomputer at the University of Texas at Austin to continue probing the Amazon and to begin studying the Southeastern United States' climate, which also is prone to enhanced climate variability.
This fall she will also teach her first solo class, "basically an introduction for graduate students about what the climate system is and how it runs," she said. Next spring, she'll offer a new course on climate change and climate modeling. "I'm so excited to be doing this," Li said.
"I'll really enjoy having some students and watching their progress as they grow more independent. It's really rewarding," she said. "You grow as well as they."
Li's path into atmospheric science began in Beijing, where her father is a chemical engineer and her mother a school teacher. When she was in high school, she visited China's bureau of meteorology.
"I put on a white jacket and entered the supercomputer room," she recalled. "It really amazed me, using computers to simulate the weather. I thought, 'this is the career I want!'"
After making top grades as an undergraduate at Peking University, she had her pick of Chinese graduate schools. So she chose the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences for a master's degree, staying on afterwards as a research scientist with a side trip to the Bureau of Meteorology Research Center in Melbourne, Australia as a visiting scientist.
She left China with strong interests in climate and climate change. After she started her Ph.D training at the University of Arizona, she began concentrating on the Amazon, following her doctoral advisor to Georgia Tech to continue that focus. William Chameides, now the Nicholas School's dean, chaired her department Li's first year in Atlanta.
After obtaining her doctorate, she said she declined a tempting offer to become a postdoctoral associate at Columbia University but instead decided to stay in Georgia "because I still liked my project there," she recalled. "We had a lot of questions about the Amazon that we didn't know how to answer. What would be the fate for those rain forests and the animals that live in them?"
She remained there until last spring, when she came to the Nicholas School after answering an ad for a faculty job. "They wanted a Ph.D. who had a climate and a modeling background to study global and regional issues," she said. "Those were all my specialties. And I also knew people at Duke in hydrology, ecology and earth sciences who I could collaborate with."
Li is married to a fellow meteorology major from China who later obtained computer science and management degrees in Georgia and is now a consultant. They have daughter who is a gifted violin player.