Log Message:
py-xarray: updated to 2024.5.0

v2024.05.0 (May 12, 2024)
-------------------------

This release brings support for pandas ExtensionArray objects, optimizations \ 
when reading Zarr, the ability to concatenate datasets without pandas indexes,
more compatibility fixes for the upcoming numpy 2.0, and the migration of most \ 
of the xarray-datatree project code into xarray ``main``!

Thanks to the 18 contributors to this release:
Aimilios Tsouvelekakis, Andrey Akinshin, Deepak Cherian, Eni Awowale, Ilan Gold, \ 
Illviljan, Justus Magin, Mark Harfouche, Matt Savoie, Maximilian Roos, Noah C. \ 
Benson, Pascal Bourgault, Ray Bell, Spencer Clark, Tom Nicholas, ignamv, \ 
owenlittlejohns, and saschahofmann.

New Features
~~~~~~~~~~~~
- New "random" method for converting to and from 360_day calendars \ 
(:pull:`8603`).
  By `Pascal Bourgault <https://github.com/aulemahal>`_.
- Xarray now makes a best attempt not to coerce \ 
:py:class:`pandas.api.extensions.ExtensionArray` to a numpy array
  by supporting 1D ``ExtensionArray`` objects internally where possible.  Thus, \ 
:py:class:`Dataset` objects initialized with a ``pd.Categorical``,
  for example, will retain the object.  However, one cannot do operations that \ 
are not possible on the ``ExtensionArray``
  then, such as broadcasting. (:issue:`5287`, :issue:`8463`, :pull:`8723`)
  By `Ilan Gold <https://github.com/ilan-gold>`_.
- :py:func:`testing.assert_allclose`/:py:func:`testing.assert_equal` now accept \ 
a new argument `check_dims="transpose"`, controlling whether a \ 
transposed array is considered equal. (:issue:`5733`, :pull:`8991`)
  By `Ignacio Martinez Vazquez <https://github.com/ignamv>`_.
- Added the option to avoid automatically creating 1D pandas indexes in \ 
:py:meth:`Dataset.expand_dims()`, by passing the new kwarg
  `create_index_for_new_dim=False`. (:pull:`8960`)
  By `Tom Nicholas <https://github.com/TomNicholas>`_.
- Avoid automatically re-creating 1D pandas indexes in :py:func:`concat()`. Also \ 
added option to avoid creating 1D indexes for
  new dimension coordinates by passing the new kwarg \ 
`create_index_for_new_dim=False`. (:issue:`8871`, :pull:`8872`)
  By `Tom Nicholas <https://github.com/TomNicholas>`_.

Breaking changes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- The PyNIO backend has been deleted (:issue:`4491`, :pull:`7301`).
  By `Deepak Cherian <https://github.com/dcherian>`_.
- The minimum versions of some dependencies were changed, in particular our \ 
minimum supported pandas version is now Pandas 2.