Comparison of Calculation Methods for Potential Reference Crop Evapotranspiration ET_0 in North Xinjiang

Reference crop evapotranspiration （ET_0） is a critical part in water cycle and water balance of ecosystem, which is greatly important to effective utilization of agricultural water resources and for making reasonable irrigation system. In order to propose a suitable method for computing ET_0 in North Xinjiang, based on daily meteorological data from May 1 to September30, 2010 provided by Weather Station of Fuhai County, we used FAO56 Penman-Monteith as the standard formula to compute ET_0, compared the differences and relations between such the method and other 4 calculation formulas, and analyzed the cause of the deviation, finally evaluated the applicability of computational method in North Xinjiang. The results showed that the calculation results by FA056 PM Method was approximate to that by FAO Penman method and IA method, of which the relative error was 9.26% and 13.51% respectively, the ET_0 results calculated by PT method and HS method were generally greater than the results by FAO56 PM, and their deviation was very obvious.