Scientists used a pair of gravity-measuring satellites, GRACE, to look at Amazon river basin water levels and, hopefully, better predict future water storage and runoff.  The twin GRACE satellites measure the mass distribution of the Earth between the two satellites, and accumulating these measurements over time lets us know how the Earth's mass shifts around.  A team led by Shin-Chan Han compared this data with simulations to look at, basically, how water is stored, released, and sloshes about within the Amazon river basin.  They compared the data with simulations.

Why is the Fourier Transform so useful both in theoretical and applied science and engineering?  In short, often it is more convenient to solve a problem in Fourier space than the space of the problem's original formulation.  In this case, one prescription to attack the problem is to convert the representation of the problem to Fourier space, solve the problem in Fourier space (where presumably it is simpler to solve) and then convert back to the original basis. The Fourier Transform may be expressed as: