We overview the results of a series of global-scale wave model (GSWM) calculations we designed to quantify the mesospheric and lower thermospheric migrating and nonmigrating semidiurnal tidal response to large-scale tropospheric latent heat release associated with deep tropical convection. Our semidiurnal tidal forcing is based on a 7-year database of global cloud imagery that is also characterized herein. The combined responses of the migrating and nonmigrating components are sufficiently large to modulate the radiatively excited migrating semidiurnal tide in the upper atmosphere during every month of the year. This modulation produces longitudinal tidal variability that may be important to the interpretation of both ground-based and satellite-borne semidiurnal tidal diagnostics.