Auroral Precipitation Modeling Relevant to the Antarctic Upper Atmosphere

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This award is for further development of the advanced auroral particle precipitation model for the energy range from a few tens of electronvolts (eV) up to hundreds of kilioelectronvolts (keV) that will include explicit seasonal dependence permitting separate prediction of the behavior of the Southern and Northern polar ionospheres. The model's parameterization will be achieved through the functional fits rather than through a handful set of discrete bins with experimental data. The higher energy particle population, which varies on a different time scale than the lower energy particle population, penetrates deeper into the Earth's upper atmosphere, affecting atmospheric chemistry much more profoundly. For the first time the precipitation models will be quantitatively compared using the nowcast, Kp-index based, and solar wind/IMF-driven approaches through the analysis of the NASA'a Polar spacecraft UVI instantaneous global images. This work will enable investigations of the multi-parameter models that combine the solar wind data and nowcast (or Kp as proves appropriate) to improve significantly the model's accuracy. Other major advances will include providing detailed particle spectra instead of just characteristic energies, and to handle highly disturbed geomagnetic conditions that no current generation precipitation models can treat. The broader impacts of this modeling effort are achieved through the running the advanced precipitation models on the NOAA/NGDC Web site in real-time operation; this model is currently under evaluation to replace their old operational precipitation model. This is important for both the geospace scientific community and operational agencies monitoring space weather. Involvement of the undergraduate students extends the project's educational component.