v2026.02.0

What's Changed

• Add empty whats-new section for v2026.02.0 by @dcherian in #11110
• Add a suggestion for how to resolve chunk manager not available error by @jsignell in #11056
• DOC: Fix broken link in gallery by @VeckoTheGecko in #11115
• DOC: Various Numpydoc fixes by @VeckoTheGecko in #11122
• DOC: Correct some wording mistakes in xarray documentation by @star1327p in #11120
• DOC: Fix "latest" version displayed on landing page by @VeckoTheGecko in #11119
• Fix silent data corruption when writing dask arrays to sharded zarr stores by @kkollsga in #11117
• Slightly Amend Zarr Encoding Specification Doc #8749 by @eshort0401 in #11013
• DOC: Options A and A -> Options A and B by @star1327p in #11127
• Fix .plot error when using positional args with col and row by @jsignell in #11111
• Add a fast path that doesn't include normalized chunks in tokenize by @jsignell in #11017
• DOC: Fix link by @VeckoTheGecko in #11135
• create issue if nightly wheel upload fails by @ianhi in #11132
• Support negative step in normalize_indexer by @avalentino in #11044
• Allow 1D coords in NDPointIndex by @ianhi in #11116
• Replace DeprecationWarning with FutureWarning by @jsignell in #11112
• Fix sortby descending order placing NaNs at beginning instead of end by @kkollsga in #11118
• Update docstrings for pandas 3 by @jsignell in #11130
• Raise FileNotFoundError for missing local files in guess_engine by @kkollsga in #11150
• add osx-64 to the pixi config. by @ChrisBarker-NOAA in #11137
• Skip one more hypothesis test for dtype string by @jsignell in #11152
• temporarily silence shape assignment warnings raised in netCDF4 by @keewis in #11146
• DOC: Fix broken links (404 errors) by @VeckoTheGecko in #11161
• Refactor cache-pixi-lock.yml workflow into external action by @VeckoTheGecko in #11096
• MAINT: Add linkcheck Pixi task by @VeckoTheGecko in #11160
• DOC: Add descriptions for pixi tasks by @VeckoTheGecko in #11155
• DOC: Update open_zarr decode_cf docstring by @VeckoTheGecko in #11165
• DOC: Add myst markdown support by @VeckoTheGecko in #11167
• raise error on slice-based selection of multi-index levels by @Mr-Neutr0n in #11168
• Update whats-new for v2026.02.0 release by @ianhi in #11163
• Add #11168 to whats-new by @ianhi in #11169

New Contributors

• @kkollsga made their first contribution in #11117
• @eshort0401 made their first contribution in #11013
• @avalentino made their first contribution in #11044
• @ChrisBarker-NOAA made their first contribution in #11137
• @Mr-Neutr0n made their first contribution in #11168

Full Changelog: v2026.01.0...v2026.02.0