We examine the strengths and weaknesses of various types of atmospheric methane (CH4) observations through a synthetic inverse modeling study. The NCAR Model of Atmospheric Transport and Chemistry (MATCH) is used to generate synthetic CH4 measurements at existing ground-based CH4 observation sites and along a sun-synchronized satellite orbit. The ground sites chosen are based on the WDCGG, which reports multi-network CH4 surface mixing ratio measurements, and the NDSC, which observes column burdens of CH4. The parameters of the SCIAMACHY onboard ESA's EnviSat satellite are used to specify the satellite orbit within the MATCH model. Methane surface emission estimates used here to drive MATCH to produce the synthetic measurements are from the Chen and Prinn (J. Geophys. Res., 2005a,b) inverse modelling study that using the actual real-time CH4 surface measurements. The assumed uncertainty of ground-based synthetic MATCH concentrations is also based on the real observations. Through Kalman filter inversion, we estimate the threshold uncertainty of satellite observations, above which the uncertainty in CH4 emission estimates using satellite data exceeds those using surface data alone. We also report the results of a comparison of the model simulations with real time surface measurements, as well as with SCIAMACHY CH4 data (WFM-DOAS version 0.5, Buchwitz, et al., Geophys. Res. Letts., 2005) for the year 2003.