The proposal seeks support for developing a new ionospheric particle precipitation model for the Southern polar cap. The most widely used precipitation model today is more than two decades old (Hardy et al., 1985, 1989); it was developed from a limited set of satellite data with extrapolation, where both the Northern and Southern polar cap crossings were combined together to increase statistics. This precipitation model has not been tested against global UV auroral images, and thus its operational effectiveness is undetermined. The model's main binning parameter (Kp index of planetary geomagnetic activity) implies that only less than half the variance in auroral power (i.e., power brought by precipitating particles into the ionosphere) can be predicted, even were binning ideal (which was not). Many advances have occurred since because the DMSP dataset has grown enormously over the last two decades. There are more than 60 satellite-years of data accumulated with vastly greater local time coverage (partly due to satellite orbit drifts). A solar cycle worth of NASA's POLAR spacecraft UV global auroral images are now available on-line, providing the ability to calibrate and validate instantaneous predictions of global auroral power. The proposed model will use specific functional fits (rather than wide bins) and optimized solar wind parameters. The new model will also probe basic space physics science problems; for example, although it is known that more precipitating energy flux occurs in darkness than in sunlight, little is known about the change in flux's spectral shape. The offset of Earth's magnetic dipole from the planet center has led to speculation about precipitation differences between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Therefore, the present proposal is best suited to resolve this issue developing specifically the precipitation model over the Antarctic. This new precipitation model can be used as input to high-latitude upper atmospheric chemistry models, for estimating ionospheric conductivity, for determining the impact of space weather on operational systems, and much else.
