SigMT: An open-source Python package for magnetotelluric data processing

Abstract

The magnetotelluric (MT) data processing is often a time-consuming job due to the manual inspection of the time series and removal of noisy segments. Use of different data selection tools combined with the robust estimation of the impedances has enabled the automation of MT data processing to a large extent. In this paper, we introduce an open-source Python package, named ‘SigMT’ for the automated MT data processing. This Python package offers Python scripts to estimate MT impedances and tipper data from the raw time series data. The overview of the SigMT package explaining different steps involved in the processing is discussed in this paper. Different data selection tools such as Mahalanobis distance based-, coherency threshold based-, polarization direction based-selection tools are integrated in the package. The incorporation of different data selection tools with robust estimation technique delivers best estimates of the impedances. SigMT is applied to the MT data from Himalaya with different selection tools and found to be yielding satisfactory results.