Bayesian inversion of magnetotelluric data considering dimensionality discrepancies

SUMMARY Bayesian inversion of magnetotelluric (MT) data is a powerful but computationally expensive approach to estimate the subsurface electrical conductivity distribution and associated uncertainty. Approximating the Earth subsurface with 1-D physics considerably speeds-up calculation of the forward problem, making the Bayesian approach tractable, but can lead to biased results when the assumption is violated. We propose a methodology to quantitatively compensate for the bias caused by the 1-D Earth assumption within a 1-D trans-dimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler. Our approach determines site-specific likelihood functions which are calculated using a dimensionality discrepancy error model derived by a machine learning algorithm trained on a set of synthetic 3-D conductivity training images. This is achieved by exploiting known geometrical dimensional properties of the MT phase tensor. A complex synthetic model which mimics a sedimentary basin environment is used to illustrate the ability of our workflow to reliably estimate uncertainty in the inversion results, even in presence of strong 2-D and 3-D effects. Using this dimensionality discrepancy error model we demonstrate that on this synthetic data set the use of our workflow performs better in 80 per cent of the cases compared to the existing practice of using constant errors. Finally, our workflow is benchmarked against real data acquired in Queensland, Australia, and shows its ability to detect the depth to basement accurately.