diff --git a/changelog/CHANGELOG_v0_17_0__v0_18_0.md b/changelog/CHANGELOG_v0_17_0__v0_18_0.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..43f392d0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog/CHANGELOG_v0_17_0__v0_18_0.md
@@ -0,0 +1,191 @@
+- 2024-05-08, Lewis Blake	update pyproject.toml
+- 2024-05-07, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1160 from metno/cams-obs-mem
+- 2024-05-06, Heiko Klein	fix log-message
+- 2024-05-06, Heiko Klein	reduce memory consumption of cams283 obsreader
+- 2024-05-06, Jan Griesfeller	Merge pull request #1102 from metno/pyaro-multi-ts
+- 2024-05-06, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1158 from metno/fix1157
+- 2024-05-06, Lewis Blake	don't need to parameterize test
+- 2024-05-06, Lewis Blake	update error in ColocatedData
+- 2024-05-06, Lewis Blake	add test
+- 2024-05-06, Lewis Blake	add __init__ to ColocatedData
+- 2024-05-06, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix merge conflict
+- 2024-05-06, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Cleanup commented code
+- 2024-05-03, Jan Griesfeller	Merge pull request #1115 from metno/readpyaro-kwargs
+- 2024-05-03, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1151 from metno/upgrade-pandas
+- 2024-05-03, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Remove upper bound on pandas dep
+- 2024-05-03, Jan Griesfeller	Merge pull request #1152 from metno/avoid_open_without_close
+- 2024-05-03, Heiko Klein	linting
+- 2024-05-03, Heiko Klein	adding more with-statements where close missing
+- 2024-05-03, Thorbjørn	Merge pull request #1150 from metno/avoid_open_without_close
+- 2024-05-03, Heiko Klein	black
+- 2024-05-03, Heiko Klein	allow newer versions of xarray
+- 2024-05-03, Heiko Klein	use load_dataarray instead of open_dataarray for collocateddata
+- 2024-05-02, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1145 from metno/fix_cams283_logging
+- 2024-05-02, Heiko Klein	use logger.info rather than logging.info to get correct class
+- 2024-05-02, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1143 from metno/netcdf4_memleak
+- 2024-05-02, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1144 from metno/memleak_detection
+- 2024-04-30, Heiko Klein	add mem_usage to logs
+- 2024-04-30, Heiko Klein	fixing netcdf-chunk cache overflow, avoid h5netcdf
+- 2024-04-30, Alvaro Valdebenito	Merge pull request #1049 from metno/vertcords1047
+- 2024-04-30, Thorbjørn	Merge pull request #1142 from metno/fix-fairmode-rounding
+- 2024-04-30, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	docs: fix explanatory comment
+- 2024-04-30, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Implement testcase for fairmode rounding bug
+- 2024-04-30, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix fairmode rounding issue
+- 2024-04-30, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Remove code
+- 2024-04-29, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Split test_AltitudeAccess_search_aux_coords()
+- 2024-04-29, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Split test_lev_increases_with_alt()
+- 2024-04-29, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Test function output values in vert_coords.py
+- 2024-04-29, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Test result of atmosphere_sigma_coordinate_to_pressure
+- 2024-04-29, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Remove geopotentialheight function and simplify exceptions
+- 2024-04-25, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix code review feedback
+- 2024-04-25, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Remove unused code
+- 2024-04-25, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Test AltitudeAccess.search_aux_coords
+- 2024-04-25, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Test geopotentialheight2altitude
+- 2024-04-25, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Test atmosphere_sigma_coordinate_to_pressure
+- 2024-04-24, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Remove unused code
+- 2024-04-24, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Remove commented code
+- 2024-04-17, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Testing
+- 2024-04-17, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Test check_access
+- 2024-04-17, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	test `extract_1D_subset_from_data()`
+- 2024-04-17, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Test lev_increases_with_alt
+- 2024-04-17, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Remove unused functions in
+- 2024-04-17, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Implement tests vert_coords.py
+- 2024-04-16, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	WIP
+- 2024-04-16, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Add type hints to vert_coords.py
+- 2024-03-18, lewisblake	include vert_coords.py in testing coverage
+- 2024-03-14, lewisblake	Use continue instead of pass in vert_coords.py
+- 2024-04-29, Charlie Negri	Merge pull request #1139 from metno/fixes-for-cams283
+- 2024-04-29, charlien	fix ColocatedData calls in the cams2_83 engine as required after latest change in main-dev, get rid of chunks in the reader since it's too slow
+- 2024-04-25, Thorbjørn	Merge pull request #1134 from metno/pydantic-colocateddata
+- 2024-04-25, Lewis Blake	Merge pull request #1060 from metno/read-colocated-files-857
+- 2024-04-25, lewisblake	fix typo
+- 2024-04-25, Lewis Blake	rm fake_5d coldata - not allowed and covered
+- 2024-04-25, Lewis Blake	rm testing cases with 5d data. can't make anymore
+- 2024-04-25, Lewis Blake	Merge pull request #1136 from metno/improve_tests
+- 2024-04-25, Lewis Blake	modify tests to adhere to pydantic data assignment
+- 2024-04-24, charlien	add test
+- 2024-04-24, charlien	add case to test
+- 2024-04-24, charlien	small improvement to tests
+- 2024-04-25, Thorbjørn	Merge pull request #1117 from metno/fix1114
+- 2024-04-24, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Wrong import after merge
+- 2024-04-24, Lewis Blake	Merge pull request #1137 from metno/lewisblake-delete-hoqq
+- 2024-04-24, Lewis Blake	pydantic validation errors
+- 2024-04-24, Lewis Blake	don't allow None
+- 2024-04-24, Lewis Blake	test DataDimError for high-dim xarray
+- 2024-04-24, Lewis Blake	thorbjørn feedback
+- 2024-04-23, Lewis Blake	rm if in model validator
+- 2024-04-23, Lewis Blake	clean up
+- 2024-04-23, Lewis Blake	check string possession in tests
+- 2024-04-23, Lewis Blake	simplier endswith() criteria in tests
+- 2024-04-22, Lewis Blake	passing local tests
+- 2024-04-22, Lewis Blake	last of postitional arguments
+- 2024-04-22, Lewis Blake	clean up. not passing all other tests
+- 2024-04-22, Lewis Blake	test_colocateddata passing
+- 2024-04-22, Lewis Blake	WIPeroni
+- 2024-04-22, Lewis Blake	pydantic passes, tests don't
+- 2024-04-16, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	doc: Update references to mathutils.calc_statistics()
+- 2024-04-16, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Cleanup
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix documentation
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Move default statistics config definition to its own function
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Simplify calculate_statistics() interface
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Small fixes
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Test data_filters.py
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix merge
+- 2024-04-15, Thorbjørn	Fix typehint for data_filter implementations 2
+- 2024-04-15, Thorbjørn	Fix typehint for data_filter implementations.
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Cleanup commented code
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Filter based on mask
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Move tests
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix function names
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix: Use | None instead of Optional
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Small documentation fix
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Refactor
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	add custom stats test
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	fix missing _init_stats_dummy
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	WIP
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Remove no longer needed code.
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	More testing
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Documentation
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Documentation and refactor
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix broken stats / tests
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Some documentation
+- 2024-04-12, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Fix imports
+- 2024-04-11, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Initial calculate_stats() implementation
+- 2024-04-11, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	WIP
+- 2024-03-18, lewisblake	first sucessful attempt
+- 2024-04-24, Lewis Blake	Delete hoqq
+- 2024-04-23, Lewis Blake	Merge pull request #1132 from metno/1106-remove-all-aeronet-v2-data-sets-paths
+- 2024-04-23, Lewis Blake	Merge pull request #1128 from metno/cams2-83-main
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	formatting
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	add test for cams2_83
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	formatting
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	add test for cams2_83
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	fix mismatch in error name
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	clean up code
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	clean up code
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	clarify return types
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	without slash replacement the code crashes
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	formatting
+- 2024-04-23, charlien	forecast subfolder behind if guard on proj_id=cams2-83
+- 2024-04-22, charlien	go back to slashes in periods strings, but do not revert the slash replacement before writing the scat and map files: this means these files will contain slashes from now on
+- 2024-04-22, charlien	avoid slashes in parsing periods from dates
+- 2024-04-22, Jan Griesfeller	vars_desired requires a list according to type hints from pycharm
+- 2024-04-22, Jan Griesfeller	remove outdated AeronetV2 datasets
+- 2024-04-22, Jan Griesfeller	remove outdated AeronetV2 datasets
+- 2024-04-22, Jan Griesfeller	remove outdated AeronetV2 datasets
+- 2024-04-20, charlien	formatting
+- 2024-04-20, charlien	we do not want the cache produced by previous runs to be cleared by default for cams2_83
+- 2024-04-19, charlien	clean commented code
+- 2024-04-19, charlien	fix test
+- 2024-04-19, charlien	cleanup dead code
+- 2024-04-19, charlien	clean
+- 2024-04-19, charlien	use cached_property
+- 2024-04-19, charlien	rename cams2_83 command
+- 2024-04-18, charlien	fix tests, forgot to remove verbose from there
+- 2024-04-18, charlien	get rid of the verbose option since it's pretty useless for cams2_83
+- 2024-04-18, charlien	remove quite/QUITE (old code leftovers), checkout code from main-dev that does not affect cams2_83
+- 2024-04-18, Heiko Klein	code cleanup in tests
+- 2024-04-18, Heiko Klein	Merge branch 'main-dev' into cams2-83-main
+- 2024-04-18, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1127 from metno/fix-version
+- 2024-04-18, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	fix "fix version fix"
+- 2024-04-18, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	fix version fix
+- 2024-04-18, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	fix version
+- 2024-04-17, charlien	make use_fairmode configurable from command line so that we can exclude the fairmode plots from the week and day experiments
+- 2024-04-17, charlien	Merge branch 'main-dev' into cams2-83-experiments-2
+- 2024-04-16, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1121 from metno/map_eng_tryexcept
+- 2024-04-16, Heiko Klein	blac
+- 2024-04-16, Heiko Klein	Update test_modelmaps_engine.py
+- 2024-04-16, Heiko Klein	Merge pull request #1122 from metno/change-geonum-version
+- 2024-04-16, charlien	Merge branch 'map_eng_tryexcept' into cams2-83-experiments-2
+- 2024-04-16, charlien	tweak code following review advice
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	Merge branch 'map_eng_tryexcept' into cams2-83-experiments-2
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	handle exceptions and loops so to obtain the desired behavior for cams2_83: if there is no model data, skip the model
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	Merge branch 'map_eng_tryexcept' into cams2-83-experiments-2
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	formatting
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	round array
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	add dummy test
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	forgotten return, remove round_floats
+- 2024-04-15, Thorbjørn	Remove superfluous dependencies
+- 2024-04-15, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Change geonum version to official release
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	start work for map engine improvements
+- 2024-04-15, charlien	add another dummy test
+- 2024-04-12, Daniel Heinesen	Adds TODO note for validation of extra
+- 2024-04-12, Daniel Heinesen	Linting
+- 2024-04-12, Daniel Heinesen	Linting
+- 2024-04-12, Daniel Heinesen	Adds test for kwargs
+- 2024-04-12, Daniel Heinesen	Adds single test for multiple ts types
+- 2024-04-12, Daniel Heinesen	Linting
+- 2024-04-11, Daniel Heinesen	Adds option for kwargs in PyaroConfig
+- 2024-04-11, Lewis Blake	Merge pull request #1104 from metno/1103-add-general-usage-c3s-work-to-main-dev
+- 2024-04-11, Lewis Blake	Merge pull request #1110 from metno/fix1096
+- 2024-04-11, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	More extensive parametrization in test_setupclasses()
+- 2024-04-10, charlien	Merge branch 'main-dev' into cams2-83-experiments-2
+- 2024-04-10, Lewis Blake	Merge pull request #1111 from metno/fix1080
+- 2024-04-10, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	Add test parametrization
+- 2024-04-10, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	test: Add test for drop_stats behaviour
+- 2024-04-10, Alvaro Valdebenito	 test EvalSetup instantiation
+- 2024-04-10, Alvaro Valdebenito	handle EvalSetup.model_extra is None
+- 2024-04-10, Alvaro Valdebenito	eval_setup as test fixture
+- 2024-04-10, thorbjoernl (Thorbjørn)	fix: Drop stats not happening when num_valid=0
+- 2024-04-10, Jan Jurgen Griesfeller	Merge remote-tracking branch 'refs/remotes/origin/main-dev' into 1103-add-general-usage-c3s-work-to-main-dev
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 98225208c..ce9ed1a9e 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ build-backend = "flit_core.buildapi"
 
 [project]
 name = "pyaerocom"
-version = "0.18.dev0"
+version = "0.18.0"
 authors = [{ name = "MET Norway" }]
 description = "pyaerocom model evaluation software"
 classifiers = [