BUG: Fix handling of empty shapely geometries in clip() (#2595)

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ Deprecations and compatibility notes:
 - resolve ``matplotlib.cm`` warning in ``.explore()`` (#2596)
 
 Bug fixes:
+- Fix cryptic error message in ``geopandas.clip()`` when clipping with an empty geometry (#2589)
 - Accessing `gdf.geometry` where the active geometry column is missing, and a column named `"geometry"` is present 
   will now raise an `AttributeError`, rather than returning `gdf["geometry"]` (#2575) 
 - Combining GeoSeries/GeoDataFrames with ``pandas.concat`` will no longer silently

geopandas/tools/clip.py

@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ A module to clip vector data using GeoPandas.
 """
 import warnings
 
+import numpy as np
 import pandas.api.types
 from shapely.geometry import Polygon, MultiPolygon, box
 
@@ -168,7 +169,11 @@ def clip(gdf, mask, keep_geom_type=False):
     elif mask_is_list_like:
         box_mask = mask
     else:
-        box_mask = mask.bounds
+        # Avoid empty tuple returned by .bounds when geometry is empty. A tuple of
+        # all nan values is consistent with the behavior of
+        # {GeoSeries, GeoDataFrame}.total_bounds for empty geometries.
+        # TODO(shapely) can simpely use mask.bounds once relying on Shapely 2.0
+        box_mask = mask.bounds if not mask.is_empty else (np.nan,) * 4
     box_gdf = gdf.total_bounds
     if not (
         ((box_mask[0] <= box_gdf[2]) and (box_gdf[0] <= box_mask[2]))

geopandas/tools/tests/test_clip.py

@@ -450,3 +450,28 @@ def test_clip_single_multipoly_no_extra_geoms(
     multi = buffered_locations.dissolve(by="type").reset_index()
     clipped = clip(multi, masks)
     assert clipped.geom_type[0] == "Polygon"
+
+
+@pytest.mark.filterwarnings("ignore:All-NaN slice encountered")
+@pytest.mark.parametrize(
+    "mask",
+    [
+        Polygon(),
+        (np.nan,) * 4,
+        (np.nan, 0, np.nan, 1),
+        GeoSeries([Polygon(), Polygon()], crs="EPSG:3857"),
+        GeoSeries([Polygon(), Polygon()], crs="EPSG:3857").to_frame(),
+        GeoSeries([], crs="EPSG:3857"),
+        GeoSeries([], crs="EPSG:3857").to_frame(),
+    ],
+)
+def test_clip_empty_mask(buffered_locations, mask):
+    """Test that clipping with empty mask returns an empty result."""
+    clipped = clip(buffered_locations, mask)
+    assert_geodataframe_equal(
+        clipped,
+        GeoDataFrame([], columns=["geometry", "type"], crs="EPSG:3857"),
+        check_index_type=False,
+    )
+    clipped = clip(buffered_locations.geometry, mask)
+    assert_geoseries_equal(clipped, GeoSeries([], crs="EPSG:3857"))