Yes, in most cases the forecast fields at time 0 are the same as the analysis fields. The exceptions are:

  • Soil temperature lev2
  • Soil temperature lev3
  • Soil temperature lev4
  • Skin temperature
  • 2m temperature
  • 2m dew-point temperature

Soil temperature lev2, 3 and 4 and skin temperature are identical over land; however, over sea there are differences due to the re-computation of the sea-ice mixed temperature, using the new SST and ice fraction provided by the analysis.

The difference between the 2m temperature and the 2m dewpoint temperature is due to the nature of these two fields: they are diagnostic fields, computed at each forecast step (including step =0) as an interpolated value between the lowest level and the surface, whereas the analysed values are the result of a separate computation of the 2m analysis.