Methane is one of the most important greenhouse gases. Methane emissions from land sources to the atmosphere often occur in the form of short but intense outbursts, which are difficult to measure. We developed a new software tool based on wavelets which reliably quantifies such methane outbursts. Using these results as a reference, our study shows that regular data processing using the eddy-covariance technique provides solid long-term methane budgets, but short-term uncertainties can be high.