Bayesian Full‐Waveform Monitoring of CO ₂ Storage With Fluid‐Flow Priors via Generative Modeling

Abstract Quantitative monitoring of subsurface changes is essential for ensuring the safety of geological sequestration. Full‐waveform monitoring (FWM) can resolve these changes at high spatial resolution, but conventional deterministic inversion lacks uncertainty quantification and incorporates only limited prior information. Deterministic approaches can also yield unreliable results with sparse and noisy seismic data. To address these limitations, we develop a Bayesian FWM framework that combines reservoir flow physics with generative prior modeling. Prior saturation realizations are constructed by performing multiphase flow simulations on prior geological realizations. Seismic velocity is related to saturation through rock physics modeling. A variational autoencoder (VAE) trained on the priors maps high‐dimensional saturation fields onto a low‐dimensional, approximately Gaussian latent space, enabling efficient Bayesian inference while retaining the key geometrical structure of the plume. Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is used to infer saturation changes from time‐lapse seismic data and to quantify associated uncertainties. Numerical results show that this approach improves inversion stability and accuracy under extremely sparse and noisy acquisition and baseline errors, whereas deterministic methods become unreliable. Statistical seismic monitoring provides posterior uncertainty estimates that identify where additional measurements would most reduce ambiguity and mitigate errors arising from biased rock physics parameters. The framework combines reservoir physics, generative priors, and Bayesian inference to provide uncertainty quantification for time‐lapse monitoring of storage and other subsurface processes.