<p>As a greenhouse gas with strong global warming potential, atmospheric methane (CH<sub>4</sub>) emissions have attracted a great deal of attention. Remote sensing measurements can provide information about CH<sub>4</sub> sources and emissions. However, accurate assessment of CH<sub>4</sub> emissions is challenging due to the influence of aerosol scattering in the atmosphere. In this study, imaging spectroscopic measurements from the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer–Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) in the short-wave infrared are used to analyze the impact of aerosol scattering on CH<sub>4</sub> retrievals. Using a numerically efficient two-stream-exact-single-scattering radiative transfer model, we also simulate AVIRIS-NG measurements for different scenarios and quantify the impact of aerosol scattering using two retrieval techniques – the traditional Matched Filter (MF) method and the Optimal Estimation (OE) method, which is a popular approach for trace gas retrievals. The results show that the MF method exhibits up to 50 % lower fractional retrieval bias compared to the OE method at high CH<sub>4</sub> concentrations (> 100 % enhancement over typical background values) and is suitable for detecting strong CH<sub>4</sub> emissions, while the OE method is an optimal technique for diffuse sources (< 50 % enhancement), showing up to five times smaller fractional retrieval bias than the MF method. In addition, the impacts of aerosol scattering as a function of different parameters, such as surface albedo, CH<sub>4</sub> concentration, aerosol optical depth, single scattering albedo and asymmetry parameter, are also discussed.</p>