Systems and methods disclosed herein, in accordance with one or more embodiments provide for imaging gas in a scene, the scene having a background and a possible occurrence of gas. In one embodiment, a method and a system adapted to perform the method includes: controlling a thermal imaging system to capture a gas IR image representing the temperature of a gas and a background IR image representing the temperature of a background based on a predetermined absorption spectrum of the gas, on an estimated gas temperature and on an estimated background temperature; and generating a gas-absorption-path-length image, representing the length of the path of radiation from the background through the gas, based on the gas image and the background IR image. The system and method may include generating a gas visualization image based on the gas-absorption-path-length image to display an output image visualizing a gas occurrence in the scene.