diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index e301836bd..c8c973a67 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ Code freeze date: YYYY-MM-DD
 ### Fixed
 
 - Fixed asset count in impact logging message [#1195](https://github.com/CLIMADA-project/climada_python/pull/1195).
+- `Hazard.from_raster_xarray` now returns a sparse matrix instead of a sparse array [#1261](https://github.com/CLIMADA-project/climada_python/pull/1261).
 
 ### Deprecated
 
diff --git a/climada/hazard/test/test_xarray.py b/climada/hazard/test/test_xarray.py
index b20f7ab05..3e3e0799c 100644
--- a/climada/hazard/test/test_xarray.py
+++ b/climada/hazard/test/test_xarray.py
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
 import numpy as np
 import xarray as xr
 from pyproj import CRS
-from scipy.sparse import csr_array, csr_matrix
+from scipy.sparse import csr_matrix
 
 from climada.hazard.base import Hazard
 from climada.util.constants import DEF_CRS
@@ -104,8 +104,8 @@ def _assert_default_types(self, hazard):
         self.assertIsInstance(hazard.event_id, np.ndarray)
         self.assertIsInstance(hazard.event_name, list)
         self.assertIsInstance(hazard.frequency, np.ndarray)
-        self.assertIsInstance(hazard.intensity, csr_matrix | csr_array)
-        self.assertIsInstance(hazard.fraction, csr_matrix | csr_array)
+        self.assertIsInstance(hazard.intensity, csr_matrix)
+        self.assertIsInstance(hazard.fraction, csr_matrix)
         self.assertIsInstance(hazard.date, np.ndarray)
 
     def test_load_path(self):
diff --git a/climada/hazard/xarray.py b/climada/hazard/xarray.py
index 167fdad6a..95b20eee5 100644
--- a/climada/hazard/xarray.py
+++ b/climada/hazard/xarray.py
@@ -58,7 +58,9 @@ def _to_csr_matrix(array: xr.DataArray) -> sparse.csr_matrix:
         output_dtypes=[array.dtype],
     )
     sparse_coo = array.compute().data  # Load into memory
-    return sparse_coo.tocsr()  # Convert sparse.COO to scipy.sparse.csr_array
+    return sparse.csr_matrix(
+        sparse_coo.tocsr()
+    )  # Convert sparse.COO to scipy.sparse.csr_matrix
 
 
 # Define accessors for xarray DataArrays