As the driest summer in Seattle’s record books ended, trees across the city were sounding silent alarms.

It was the latest in a string of Seattle summers in the last decade, including a record-breaking heat dome in 2021, to feature drier conditions and hotter temperatures that have left many trees with premature brown leaves and needles, bald branches and excessive seeding –- all signs of stress.

“You see it in big leaf maples and hemlocks, just loaded with cones or seeds, it’s kind of their last-ditch effort to reproduce,” said Shea Cope, an arborist at Washington Park Arboretum, a sprawling 230-acre (93 hectare) park north of downtown.

This summer was fatal for three “significant” trees in the park’s pine collection, including an 85-year-old Japanese red pine infected with fungus left by beetles.

“We’re losing conifers faster than our broad leaf, deciduous ones,” Cope added as he surveyed a towering knobcone pine with half its canopy dead.

Cities worldwide have promised to plant more carbon-absorbing trees to help fight climate change. Research has shown the shade of mature trees also helps reduce unhealthful “heat islands,” especially in poor neighborhoods. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act infused $1.5 billion into the Forest Service’s urban tree program — money for cities to do even more planting and maintenance.