This release brings much improved read performance with Zarr arrays (without consolidated metadata), better support for additional array types, as well as bugfixes and performance improvements.
Thanks to the 20 contributors to this release:
Bruce Merry, Davis Bennett, Deepak Cherian, Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos, Florian Jetter, Illviljan, Janukan Sivajeyan, Justus Magin, Kai Germaschewski, Kai Mühlbauer, Max Jones, Maximilian Roos, Michael Niklas, Patrick Peglar, Sam Levang, Scott Huberty, Spencer Clark, Stephan Hoyer, Tom Nicholas and Vecko

What's Changed

• Add blank What's New by @Illviljan in #9817
• Upgrade ruff to 0.8.0 by @DimitriPapadopoulos in #9816
• Improved duck array wrapping by @slevang in #9798
• Use compute instead of load in plot by @Illviljan in #9818
• Described default centre argument behaviour in rolling functions by @JanukanS in #9819
• Fix type annotations for get_axis_num (GH 9822) by @bmerry in #9827
• Test type annotations for Variable.get_axis_num by @bmerry in #9832
• FIX: gracfully handle missing seaborn dependency by @scott-huberty in #9835
• move ensure_dtype_not_object from conventions to backends by @kmuehlbauer in #9828
• Fixed function links in dataarray.py and dataset.py by @JanukanS in #9850
• Fix seed for random test data. by @dcherian in #9844
• Set zarr_format for zarr.consolidate_metadata by @dcherian in #9848
• Reference ncdata in docs. by @pp-mo in #9847
• Add Pyproject pre-commit hooks by @VeckoTheGecko in #9840
• dask tests: Avoid check for non-copies, xfail pandas comparison by @dcherian in #9857
• Avoid local functions in push by @fjetter in #9856
• Add token to codecov by @max-sixty in #9865
• Remove deprecated behavior for non-dim positional args by @max-sixty in #9864
• Fix/silence upstream tests by @dcherian in #9879
• finalize deprecation of "closed"-parameter by @kmuehlbauer in #9882
• Fix upstream Zarr compatibility by @dcherian in #9884
• Fix interpolation when non-numeric coords are present. by @dcherian in #9887
• Use integers instead of randint by @Illviljan in #9889
• Add "unit"-parameter to date_range, enhance iso time parser to us by @kmuehlbauer in #9885
• Add missing DataTree attributes to docs by @maxrjones in #9876
• move scalar-handling logic into possibly_convert_objects by @kmuehlbauer in #9900
• remove unused "type: ignore" comments in test_plot.py by @kmuehlbauer in #9904
• Optimize idxmin, idxmax with dask by @dcherian in #9800
• Cache pre-existing Zarr arrays in Zarr backend by @d-v-b in #9861
• Explicitly configure ReadTheDocs build to use conf.py by @shoyer in #9908
• Skip dask rolling by @Illviljan in #9909
• Rewrite interp to use apply_ufunc by @dcherian in #9881
• friendlier error messages for missing chunk managers by @keewis in #9676
• Edit serialization error message by @VeckoTheGecko in #9916
• Enhance and move ISO-8601 parser to coding.times by @kmuehlbauer in #9899
• fix warning from scipy backend guess_can_open on directory by @germasch in #9911
• time coding refactor by @kmuehlbauer in #9906
• Whats-new 2025.01.0 by @dcherian in #9919

New Contributors

• @JanukanS made their first contribution in #9819
• @bmerry made their first contribution in #9827
• @pp-mo made their first contribution in #9847
• @fjetter made their first contribution in #9856
• @d-v-b made their first contribution in #9861
• @germasch made their first contribution in #9911

Full Changelog: v2024.11.0...v2025.01.0