Historical monthly records of tropical and midlatitude boundary-layer capping inversion strength and height from 1950 to 2023

The boundary-layer capping inversion is referred to as an entrainment interfacial layer (EIL), which determines the upper limit of boundary-layer turbulent mixing and the mixture between the cloud top and free-tropospheric air. It strongly constrains the vertical distribution of aerosols, moisture and clouds. Thus, the climate changes in the capping inversion makes an important contribution to cloud radiative feedback and climate sensitivity. A refined metric for the capping inversion strength (namely the profile-based estimated inversion strength, EISp) and a metric for its height (zinv) have been proposed in Wang et al., (2023, ACP - Profile-based estimated inversion strength) and are derived from the hourly ERA5 reanalysis. Notably, EISp and zinv do not rely on the well-mixed assumption and thereby can represent the capping inversion in the decoupled boundary layers. Here, this dataset provides the historical records of monthly EISp and zinv of 0.5-degree spatial resolution between 60°S and 60°N from 1950 to 2023. This dataset is potentially important for understanding how the environmental temperature structure changes with global temperature rising.