Let's say I have some data that corresponds to the average temperature in a city measured every minute for around 1 year. How can I determine if there's cyclical patterns from the data using an FFT?
I know how it works for sound... I do an FFT of a sound wave and now the magnitude is shown in the Y axis and the frequency in Hertz is shown in the X-axis because the sampling frequency is in Hertz. But in my previous example the sampling frequency would be... 1 sample every minute, right? So how should I change it to something meaningful? I would get cycles/minute instead of cycles per seconds? And what does cycles/minute would mean here?
I think your interpretation is correct - you are just scaling to different units. Once you've found the spectral peak you might find it more useful to take the reciprocal to express the value in minutes/cycle (ie the length of the periodic cycle). Effectively this is thinking in terms of wavelength rather than frequency.