diff --git a/doc/release/4.1.0.md b/doc/release/4.1.0.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..ce91a2e50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/release/4.1.0.md
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+## Release Notes for TECA 4.1.0
+Thu May  6 12:10:26 PM PDT 2021
+
+* new mask below surface algorithm, inetgrated into all the apps
+* new unpack NetCDF packed data stage
+* add coordinate normalization stage transform for longitude from -180 to 180
+  to 0 to 360
+* new IWV algorithm
+* new time based file layouts (daily, monthly, yearly, seasonal)
+* BARD app can now generate output fields weighted by AR probabilities
+* new rename variables stage
+* improvements to cartesian_mesh_source for remeshing
+* cf_reader correctly detects centering and per field dimensionality
+* multi_cf_reader MCF file format improvements. Add support for reader
+  properties, globablly and per reader.
+* cf_reader option to produce 2D field when the 3'rd dimension is length 1
+* Cartesian meshes can now contain both 2D and 3D arrays, metadata annotations
+  are used to differentiate at run time
+* metadata probe improvements to report per-field centering
+* new remeshing capability deployed in cf_restripe and apps that utilize
+  elevation mask
+* improvements to the user guide
+* refactored source code documentation to be compatible with Doxygen,
+* published Doxygen on the rtd site : https://teca.readthedocs.io/en/integrating_breathe/doxygen/index.html
+* new capabilities in the cf_restripe command line application for remeshing
+* 25+ bug fixes
diff --git a/doc/rtd/developer.rst b/doc/rtd/developer.rst
index e7b0d19ed..fa9b0b803 100644
--- a/doc/rtd/developer.rst
+++ b/doc/rtd/developer.rst
@@ -110,3 +110,19 @@ to the title of the plot. Example output is shown in :numref:`prof_vis_10t_1r`.
 
    Visualization of TECA's run time profiler for the test_bayesian_ar_detect
    regression test, run with 1 MPI rank and 10 threads.
+
+
+Creating PyPi Packages
+----------------------
+The typical sequence for pushing and testing to PyPi is as follows. Be sure to
+add an rc number to the version in setup.py when testing since these are unique
+and cannot be reused.
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    python3 setup.py build_ext
+    python3 setup.py install
+    python3 setup.py sdist
+    python3 -m twine upload --repository-url https://test.pypi.org/legacy/ dist/*
+    pip3 install --index-url https://test.pypi.org/simple/ teca
+
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 772ee7c91..e915c9430 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
 # when compiled outside of the git repo we must set the version
 # manually. Also note that these must be unique per upload to PyPi
 # so be sure to use an 'rcX' for testing
-teca_version = "4.0.0"
+teca_version = "4.1.0"
 
 class CMakeExtension(Extension):
     def __init__(self, name, sourcedir=''):