Born in Chicago, Illinois, Bette first became interested in Meteorology as a child watching P.J. Hoff, the CBS affiliate weatherman. Shortly after earning her doctorate, she redirected her focus from modeling present climate to modeling past climates, starting with her pioneering work with John Kutzbach on orbital forcing of the African-Asian monsoon during the Holocene. Since this trail-blazing simulation, Bette has investigated past climate change and climate variability across a wide range of time scales, including the Carboniferous (300 million years ago), Cretaceous (66 million years ago), Eocene (50 million years ago), Pliocene (3 million years ago), Last Interglacial (130,00 to 119,000 years ago), Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years ago), Last Deglaciation (17,000 to 8000 years ago), mid-Holocene (6000 years ago), and the Last Millennium (850 CE to present).