Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) exhibit a pronounced temporal variability on various time scales. Not all the sources of this variability have been identified so far, which complicates particularly the discussed use of NLCs as an indicator for trends in the mesopause region. One possible natural source of variability are gravitational tides, which are caused by the moon.

The influence of lunar tides has been demonstrated for several mesospheric parameters like temperature, winds and airglow emissions. Also for some NLC parameters the lunar influence has already been shown, e.g., for the maximum NLC brightness. However, these studies were based on visual observations. Recently, lunar tides have been also identified in systematic satellite measurements of NLCs, particularly in the NLC occurrence rate, the NLC albedo and the ice water content measured with the SBUV instruments.

We extend this analysis here to the diverse dataset of the Solar Occultation for Ice Experiment (SOFIE) on the AIM satellite. As SOFIE is particularly designed for NLC research, it contains a variety of parameters including the background atmosphere (e.g., temperature and trace gases), NLC properties (e.g., ice water content, top and bottom altitude), microphysical properties (e.g., the particle size distribution), and mesopause properties. We find a signature of the semidiurnal lunar tide in all of these parameters and estimate amplitudes and phases of the response to the lunar forcing. The amplitudes and particularly the phases show for many parameters a complex altitude dependent structure. Although individual relationships between the signatures of different parameters can be attributed qualitatively to known NLC physics, the mechanisms behind other relationships cannot be easily explained.