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Diagnostic comparisons and evaluations of the global atmospheric energy and water budgets have been carried out with the new ERA‐Interim reanalysis product and with satellite‐derived fluxes. In the first part of this paper, we address time discretization, mass imbalance, and spin‐up effects, which affect diagnostics from analysis and forecast fields in reanalysis. We discuss two ways of calculating vertically integrated horizontal energy and moisture flux divergence: (1) direct computation using analyzed fields and (2) indirectly from forecast model fluxes and vertically integrated tendencies. The spatial divergence patterns from the indirect method are found to be more realistic than those from direct computation from 6‐hourly analyses since they are much less affected by temporal sampling errors, but corrections were nevertheless necessary to ensure mass consistency. The second part of this paper is focused on …