I am a Pluto climate scientist! I investigate how Pluto's climate and atmosphere are coupled to its surface ices and how they have varied with time over the age of the solar system. I use numerical modeling and observations from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft mission to do this work, alongside my advisor Dr. Leslie Young (SwRI). Additionally, I am broadly interested in the icy and ocean worlds of the outer solar system.
Publications:
Johnson, P. E., Keane, J.T., Young, L.A., and Matsuyama, I. "New Constraints on Pluto's Sputnik Planitia Ice Sheet from a Coupled Reorientation-Climate Model," The Planetary Science Journal, 2021. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ac1d42
Johnson, P. E., Young, L.A., Protopapa, S., Schmitt, B., Gabasova, L., Lewis, B., Stansberry, J., Mandt, K, and White, O. "Modeling Pluto's Minimum Pressure: Implications for Haze Production," Icarus, 2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103520304188?via%...
Johnson, P. E., Morales-Juberias, R., Simon, A., Gaulme, P., Wong, M. H., and Cosentino, R. G. "Longitudinal variability in Jupiter's zonal winds derived from multi-wavelength HST observations," Planetary and Space Science, 2018. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032063317301472?via%...