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Aurora: An open-source Python implementation of the EMTF package for magnetotelluric data processing using MTH5 and mt-metadata

Karl Kappler·Jared R. Peacock·Gary D. Egbert·Andrew Frassetto·Lindsey Heagy·Anna Kelbert·Laura Keyson·Douglas W. Oldenburg·Timothy Ronan·Justin Sweet
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Abstract

The Aurora software package robustly estimates single station and remote reference electromagnetic transfer functions (TFs) from magnetotelluric (MT) time series. Aurora is part of an open-source processing workflow that leverages the self-describing data container MTH5, which in turn leverages the general mt-metadata framework to manage metadata. These pre-existing packages simplify the processing by providing managed data structures, allowing for transfer functions to be generated with only a few lines of code. The processing depends on two inputs -- a table defining the data to use for TF estimation, and a JSON file specifying the processing parameters, both of which are generated automatically, and can be modified if desired. Output TFs are returned as mt_metadata objects, and can be exported to a variety of common formats for plotting, modeling and inversion.

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Karl Kappler, Jared R. Peacock, Gary D. Egbert, Andrew Frassetto, Lindsey Heagy, Anna Kelbert, Laura Keyson, Douglas W. Oldenburg, Timothy Ronan, Justin Sweet. 2024. Aurora: An open-source Python implementation of the EMTF package for magnetotelluric data processing using MTH5 and mt-metadata. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.06832

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