Proton temperature in a zoomed-in box centred on the dayside magnetosphere in the southward IMF simulation. The black lines represent magnetic field lines. The two locations in the northern and southern cusps where the precipitating fluxes can be derived at each time step are shown with black circles, and the inset axes show cuts of the corresponding VDFs in the () frame, with the loss cone indicated in magenta (northern cusp VDF) or brown (southern cusp VDF). The velocity grid spacing is 1000 km/s.