Color discontinuity in surfaces defined by arrays that contain an entire row/column of gaps

The surface attribute connectgaps=True doesn’t work when a coordinate array, x, y, or z, has an entire row or column filled with nan(s). Moreover the row or column bordered by nan(s) exhibits a color discontinuity:

The above surface is defined by the parameterization x= ucos(v), y=usin(v), z =u^2, u, v in [0,1], and a fixed v-row in the associated meshgrid, filled with nan(s).

I discovered the latter issue in an attempt to plot 169 planar disks mapped onto a sphere. To avoid defining 169 traces of type surface (one for each spherical disk) I extended each disk coordinate array with a column of nan(s), and concatenated all new arrays to get x, y and z coordinate arrays, that define a unique surface, not 169.

With these settings each initial coordinate array, except the first one, has a column of nan(s), both at left and at right, that makes the corresponding disk centers and boundary circles to be mapped to a color that illustrates a sharp discontinuity. I suspect that the columns of nan(s) are not skipped when the colormapping is performed.

[archmoj]

With n=3, one side of the plot (facing the light) displays undesirable shading:

[archmoj]

And that is not related to connectgaps being enabled or disabled.