More than 50 million people across the US are under heat alerts as a brutal heat wave that has shattered records and caused the death of a motorcyclist in California’s Death Valley continues to scorch the West.

A long-running heat wave is gripping the U.S. after causing deaths and shattering records in the West over the weekend.

This heat dome, mainly centered over California, is an indication of the extreme weather patterns driven by climate change caused by fossil fuels and this trend is expected to continue for decades, according to recent studies.