Yi’s research addresses some of the fundamental yet climatically important questions in Atmospheric Science: How do clouds and precipitation modulate the Earth’s climate system? What processes control the properties of clouds and precipitation (in both shallow and deep convection)? How do these processes differ geographically (from the tropics to polar regions)? She believes this can only be achieved by innovative use of targeted field observations, state-of-the-art remote-sensing data and numerical modelling. Clouds are a key component of Earth’s water cycle and exert a strong influence on radiative balance. Yet clouds remain one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in climate projections, and will represent a tremendous challenge to the scientific community in years to come.

Yi’s other research interests include precipitation and hydrometeorological processes over the Australian alpine regions, cloud–aerosol–climate interactions over the Great Barrier Reef, and cloud–radiation–Antarctic sea ice interactions.