Abstract. Measurements from multiple laboratories have to be related to unifying and traceable reference material in order to be comparable. However, such fundamental reference materials are not available for isotope ratios in atmospheric methane, which led to misinterpretations of combined data sets in the past. We developed a method to produce a suite of synthetic CH₄-in-air standard gases that can be used to unify methane isotope ratio measurements of laboratories in the atmospheric monitoring community. Therefore, we calibrated a suite of pure methane gases of different methanogenic origin against international referencing materials that define the VSMOW (Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water) and VPDB (Vienna Pee Dee Belemnite) isotope scales. The isotope ratios of our pure methane gases range between −320 and +40 ‰ for δ²H–CH₄ and between −70 and −40 ‰ for δ¹³C–CH₄, enveloping the isotope ratios of tropospheric methane (about −85 and −47 ‰ for δ²H–CH₄ and δ¹³C–CH₄ respectively). Estimated uncertainties, including the full traceability chain, are < 1.5 ‰ and < 0.2 ‰ for δ²H and δ¹³C calibrations respectively. Aliquots of the calibrated pure methane gases have been diluted with methane-free air to atmospheric methane levels and filled into 5 L glass flasks. The synthetic CH₄-in-air standards comprise atmospheric oxygen/nitrogen ratios as well as argon, krypton and nitrous oxide mole fractions to prevent gas-specific measurement artefacts. The resulting synthetic CH₄-in-air standards are referred to as JRAS-M16 (Jena Reference Air Set – Methane 2016) and will be available to the atmospheric monitoring community. JRAS-M16 may be used as unifying isotope scale anchor for isotope ratio measurements in atmospheric methane, so that data sets can be merged into a consistent global data frame.