Shelley Christians / The Times / Gallo Images / Getty Images
Morelug farm is water-bombed by helicopter on Jan. 29, in Paarl, South Africa. Scores of firefighters are fighting a runaway veld fire that swept through the entire Boland region in the Western Cape, according to SABC News. Veld fires are fires that occur in the open countryside away from urban areas. Veld comes from the Afrikaans word for field.
Chris Hyde / Getty Images
A man comforts his daughter on their roof as they inspect damage to their neighborhood in Bundaberg, Queensland on Jan. 29, 2013. Rescue and evacuation missions continued as emergency services prepared to move patients from Bundaberg Hospital to Brisbane amid fears the hospital could lose power.
EPA
Homes are inundated with floodwater in North Bundaberg on Jan. 29, 2013. The Premier of Queensland Campbell Newman said the situation in Bundaberg remained serious, and the government was working with local authorities to ensure thousands of evacuees had access to food, water and bedding.
Reuters reports — A deluge fed by the ex-tropical cyclone Oswald has dumped more than 8 inches of rain in parts of Queensland and New South Wales over the past three days, swelling rivers and swamping towns
A fleet of 14 helicopters rescued more than 1,000 people across Queensland overnight and rescue efforts continued on Tuesday.
"Across Queensland the wild weather has broken a lot of hearts," Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.
Among the four people killed was a three-year old boy, who died in hospital after being hit by a falling tree as he and his mother watched floodwaters in parts of Brisbane, Australia's third largest city. Read the full story.
Related:
Video: Frothy sea foam spills into Australian town
PhotoBlog: Three killed, dozens rescued in Australia floods
Dave Hunt / EPA
Sea foam is seen as walkers take to Burleigh Heads beach on Queensland's Gold Coast on Jan. 29, 2013, following wild weather caused by ex-cyclone Oswald.
Cameron Spencer / Getty Images
A man hangs onto the railing of North Curl Curl ocean pool in Sydney after winds and rain battered the city, producing large swells, on Jan. 29, 2013. Parts of Sydney experienced record rainfall after ex-cyclone Oswald swept through the city on Monday night.
Rains lashed towns across eastern Australia, all the way down to Sydney, creating massive flooding, churning up foam from the ocean that bewildered drivers, and stranding civilians who had to be rescued by helicopter. NBC's Sara James reports.
Brett Faulkner / AFP - Getty Images
Floodwaters race across the Oxenford - Tamborine road on Australia's Gold Coast on Jan. 28, 2013 as severe floods swept through two states.
Dan Peled / EPA
Residents inspect their flooded home in Bundaberg, Queensland, on Jan. 28, 2013. At least 1,200 Bundaberg properties are already flooded, and there are fears the number could reach 2,000.
Dramatic video from a helmet camera shows a baby and two women being airlifted out of a truck in Eastern Australia after flood waters washed the vehicle off the road. NBC's Lester Holt reports.
Three people were reported to have been killed and dozens more were plucked from roofs and marooned cars in dramatic air rescues in northeastern Australia on Monday as severe floods swept through two states, inundating thousands of homes.
The heavy rain was caused by the remnants of a tropical cyclone that hit the country last week and also brought severe weather including tornadoes.
-- Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press
Emergency Management Queensland / Network Ten via AFP - Getty Images
A man being winched to safety by helicopter in Biloela, Queenland, on Jan. 27, 2013.
Paul Beutel / EPA
Evan Roberts surveys the remains of a neighbour's gazebo blown onto his damaged home in Bargara, Queensland on Jan. 27, 2013. A large weather system courtesy of ex tropical cyclone Oswald is causing flooding down Queensland's coast and into northern New South Wales.
Nicole Armitstead via EPA
Children playing in sea foam at Burleigh Heads in Queensland on Jan. 28, 2013.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation via EPA
A kangaroo crossing a road in Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, as it escapes from a bushfire. Several homes have been lost in a 25,000-hectare fire in Victoria's southeast.
Kerry Lawrence / NSW Rural Fire Service via AP
A fire burns in the Ku-Ring-Gai National Park on Jan. 18, 2013.
Firefighters are battling scores of wildfires in southeastern Australia as hot, dry and windy conditions combine to raise the threat, The Associated Press reports.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that emergency warnings are in place in the states of Victoria and New South Wales, and that the body of a man was found on Friday in a burnt-out vehicle near the town of Seaton.
The BBC reported on Friday that Sydney was experiencing its hottest day on record, with temperatures in the city reaching 45.8 degrees Celsius (114.44 degrees Fahrenheit).
Damian Shaw / EPA
People try to escape the heat by standing under a fire hose at Big Day Out music festival in Sydney on Jan. 18, 2013.
Julian Smith / EPA
A bushfire burns near Seaton, east of Melbourne, on Jan. 18, 2013. Reports state that a bushfire burning mainly in forest country about 200km east of Melbourne is 'as bad as it gets' and could continue for days or even weeks.
Tracey Nearmy / EPA
Rural Fire Service volunteers battle spot fires threatening homes and heading towards the Newell Highway south of the town of Coonabarabran on Jan. 18, 2013. A large 40,000 hectare bush fire is burning in the Warrumbungle National Park. Fires have destroyed more than 40 homes in New South Wales.
NSW Rural Fire Service via Reuters
A bushfire burns on Melbourne Street in Cessnock, about 75 miles north of Sydney, on Jan. 18, 2013.
Record high temperatures heat up the Australian city of Sydney with the mercury hitting 114.44 degrees Fahrenheit. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
Enny Nuraheni / Reuters
Women react as they flee from a flooded area in Jakarta, Indonesia on Jan. 17, 2013.
Supri / Reuters
A man carries his son across a flooded area in the business district of Jakarta on Jan. 17, 2013.
Dudi Anung / Indonesian Presidential Palace via EPA
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2nd left) and his Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa (left) inspecting the Presidential Palace after it was flooded in Jakarta on Jan. 17, 2013, hours before Bambang was due to welcome visiting Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Reuters reports — Heavy monsoonal rains triggered severe flooding in large swathes of the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Thursday, with many government offices and businesses forced to closed because staff could not get to work.
Weather officials warned the rains could get worse over the next few days and media reports said that thousands of people in Jakarta and its satellite cities had been forced to leave their homes because of the torrential downpours this week. Read the full story.
Enny Nuraheni / Reuters
Rescue workers evacuate residents from a flooded area in Jakarta on Jan. 17, 2013.
Achmad Ibrahim / AP
Streets are flooded in Jakarta on Jan. 17, 2013. Floods regularly hit parts of Jakarta in the rainy season, but the inundation following an intense rain storm was especially widespread.
Adek Berry / AFP - Getty Images
A driver and scooter are transported through a flooded street in Jakarta on Jan. 16, 2013.
Heavy monsoon rains have submerged Indonesia's capital of Jakarta forcing more than 20,000 residents to flee their homes. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
Aly Song / Reuters
A couple wearing a mask and a scarf visits the Bund in front of Pudong Lujiazui financial area on a hazy day in Shanghai on Jan. 16.
Wu Hong / EPA
Waste gas is discharged into the air by an oil refinery plant in Qingdao city, eastern China's Shandong province, on Jan. 16.
Aly Song / Reuters
Travel photos are displayed in a photography service shop at the Bund in front of Pudong Lujiazui financial area on a hazy day in Shanghai on Jan. 16. Chinese media said on Monday the government had to take urgent action to tackle air pollution, which has blanketed parts of the country at dangerous levels in recent days, and one newspaper called for a re-think of a "fixation" on economic growth.
Jianan Yu / Reuters
Children are put on drips as many of them are diagnosed with respiratory diseases at a provincial children's hospital in Hefei, Anhui province on Jan. 16. Days after choking smog blanketed China's capital, the country's premier-designate added his voice to appeals to curb the toxic haze, but he offered few specifics and said there was no quick fix. Particulate matter with a 2.5 micrometer diameter, known as PM2.5, can cause cardiopulmonary disease, lung cancer and acute respiratory infection, according to the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health.
Blind growth in China is the cause of the smog that has smothered Chinese cities including Beijing for a week, the government said on Jan. 16 in its first comment on the worsening air quality. Inefficient production methods and the weather were behind the thick, grey air, Vice Prime Minister Li Keqiang was quoted as saying by the state-owned China News Service. 'It warns us once again that we cannot continue the inefficient economic growth model,' he said. Years of rapid growth have vaulted Communist China into second place among the world's largest economies but often at the expense of the environment. The smog has limited visibility, cancelled flights, kept people indoors and sent them to hospitals with breathing, heart and circulation problems.
-- European Pressphoto Agency
Related: Severe Beijing smog prompts unusual transparency
Feng Li / Getty Images
A tourist looks at the Forbidden City as pollution covers the city on Jan. 16 in Beijing.
Previously on PhotoBlog:
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
Angler Billy Carmichael casts during the opening of the salmon fishing season on the River Tay on Jan. 15 in Kenmore, Scotland. A procession with a pipe band and anglers made its way through Kenmore at the east end of Loch Tay to mark the start of the 2012 salmon season on the River Tay.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
An angler casts during the opening of the salmon fishing season on the River Tay on Jan. 15 in Kenmore, Scotland.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
Kiera Gowan, 2, from Pitlochry, holds a fishing net during the opening of the salmon fishing season on the River Tay on Jan. 15 in Kenmore, Scotland.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
An angler casts during the opening of the salmon fishing season on the River Tay on Jan. 15 in Kenmore, Scotland.
Previously on PhotoBlog:
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
A passenger speedboat churns up the water, while in the background an illegal oil refinery is left burning after an earlier military chase, in a windy creek near the Nun River in Bayelsa on Dec. 6, 2012.
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
A man works at an illegal oil refinery site near the Nun River in Bayelsa on Nov. 27, 2012.
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
A locally made boat containing crude oil is maneuvered through a creek near the Nun River in Bayelsa on Dec. 6, 2012.
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
A worker pours crude oil into a locally made burner using a funnel at an illegal oil refinery site near the Nun River in Bayelsa on Nov. 25, 2012.
By Akintunde Akinleye, Reuters
Here and there on the banks, people coated in oil wade through greasy mud in patches of landscape blackened and stripped of the thick vegetation that makes Nigeria's oil-producing delta so hard to police. Plumes of grey or yellow smoke fill the air as men who will give only their first names go to work in an illegal industry that the government says lifts a fifth of Nigeria's output of two million barrels a day.
Oil 'bunkering' -- hacking into pipelines to steal crude then refining it or selling it abroad -- has become a major cost to Nigeria's treasury, which depends on oil for 80 percent of its earnings.
Major General Johnson Ochoga, who leads a military campaign against bunkering that was stepped up last year under orders from President Goodluck Jonathan, told Reuters nearly 2,000 suspects had been arrested and 4,000 refineries, 30,000 drums of products and hundreds of bunkering boats destroyed in 2012.
Yet the complicity of security officials and politicians who profit from the practice, and the lack of alternatives for those who undertake it, cast doubt on the likelihood of success.
Editor's note: Reuters made these pictures available to NBC News on Jan. 15.
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
A warning sign belonging to the company Royal Dutch Shell is seen along the Nembe Creek in Bayelsa on Dec. 2, 2012.
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
A man named Godswill works at an illegal oil refinery site, where steam rises from pipes carrying refined oil from a burner into broken containers, near the Nun River in Bayelsa on Nov. 27, 2012.
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
A man named Godswill collects crude oil from a mini storage unit filled with oil, which is waiting to be refined at an illegal refinery site near the Nun River in Bayelsa on Nov. 27, 2012.
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
Ebiowei, 48, pours water to reduce the intensity of the fire in a locally-made burner at an illegal oil refinery site near the Nun River on Nov. 27, 2012.
Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters
A closed fuel station is seen in the Ahoada community near Nigeria's oil hub city of Port Harcourt on Dec. 6, 2012.
Previously on PhotoBlog:
Marina Lacasse / The Canadian Press via AP
People watch as a killer whale surfaces through a small hole in the ice near Inukjuak in Northern Quebec on Jan. 8, 2013.
Maggie Okituk / Reuters
Two killer whales surface through a breathing hole in the ice of Hudson Bay on Jan. 9, 2013. The whales are part of a pod that is trapped in the sea ice.
Marina Lacasse / AP
Killer whales surface through a small hole in the ice on Jan. 8, 2013. Mayor Peter Inukpuk urged the Canadian government Wednesday to send an icebreaker as soon as possible to crack open the ice and help the pod of about a dozen trapped orcas find open water. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans said it is sending officials to assess the situation.
By Miranda Leitsinger, NBC News — Eleven killer whales are “locked in” by ice in a Canadian bay, with only a small area of open water for them to surface, the mayor of a nearby village said as he appealed for help to save the marine mammals.
A hunter found the killer whales, also known as orcas, on Wednesday morning in Hudson Bay, in northeastern Canada. Two of the orcas appear to be adults; the remaining nine are smaller in size, said Petah Inukpuk, mayor of Inukjuak, an Inuit village home to 1,800, in Quebec. Other reports said there were 12 orcas in the pod. Read the full story.
UPDATED: The whales are now apparently free, according to the mayor of a nearby village.
Anupam Nath / AP
Tourists watch a one-horned rhinoceros inside the Kaziranga National Park, a wildlife reserve that provides refuge to more than 2,200 endangered Indian one-horned rhinoceros, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam.
Anupam Nath / AP
A one-horned rhinoceros stands inside the Kaziranga National Park.
Anupam Nath / AP
Forest guards patrol inside the Kaziranga National Park.
The Associated Press reports from Kaziranga, India — Out of the early morning mists and tall grass of northeast India emerges a massive creature with a dinosaur-like face, having survived millions of years despite a curse — literally on its head. As elephant-borne riders approach, the formidable hulk sniffs the air for danger, then resumes its breakfast.
This is Kaziranga, refuge to more than 2,200 endangered Indian rhinoceros and one of the world's best-protected wildlife reserves. But even here, where rangers follow shoot-to-kill orders, poachers are laying siege to "Fortress Kaziranga," attempting to sheer off the animals' horns to supply a surge in demand for purported medicine in China that's pricier than gold. At least 18 rhino fell to poachers in and around the park in 2012, compared to 10 in all of India in 2011. Read the full story.
Anupam Nath / AP
A two-and-half-month old male orphan one-horned rhinoceros calf rescued during recent floods walks at a rehabilitation center inside the Kaziranga National Park.
Anupam Nath / AP
A one-horned rhinoceros wades in water as a forest guard stands nearby inside the Kaziranga National Park.
Related content:
Dean Lewins / EPA
Wearing protective clothing, a firefighter is almost surrounded by red hot flames as he protects a property affected by the Dean's Gully fire near the town of Wandandian south of Nowra, New South Wales on Jan. 8. No properties, apart from some farm sheds, have been lost in the Dean's Gully fire, which continues to burn out of control. New South Wales has been declared a total fire ban with the Illawarra, Shoalhaven and Southern Highlands placed under 'catastrophic fire conditions,' the highest fire danger level.
Julian Smith / EPA
A kangaroo hops through a burnt-out paddock after a grassfire in Sunbury, north of Melbourne, Victoria on Jan. 8. The fire has been contained.
By NBC News staff and wire reports
Firefighters battled scores of wildfires raging across southeast Australia on Tuesday as authorities evacuated national parks and warned that record-level, blistering temperatures and high winds had led to "catastrophic" conditions in some areas.
"We are shaping up for one of the worst fire danger days on record," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said. "You don't get conditions worse than this. We are at the catastrophic level and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."
Catastrophic threat level is the most severe rating applicable. Continue reading.
Dean Lewins / EPA
A sky crane water bombing helicopter flies through thick smoke over the town of Wandandian south of Nowra, on Jan. 8.
Lukas Coch / EPA
Firefighters continue to hose around a tree that survived a grass fire in Oura, near Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, on Jan. 8.
Rob Blakers / EPA
Alison Palmer, right, and her eleven-year-old son Zac at her parents' house, which was destroyed after bushfires swept through the region at Boomer Bay on the Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania, on Jan. 8. Residents on a southern Tasmanian peninsula have been urged to seek refuge ahead of a renewed bushfire threat across the region.
Sign up for the NBCNews.com Photos Newsletter
Previously on PhotoBlog:
Dave Martin / AP
A leafless tree stands over graves in the Cheniere Caminada cemetery in Grand Isle, La. Many coastal Louisiana cemeteries are just skeletons of what they used to be.
The Associated Press reports from Leeville, La. — As a young adult, Kathleen Cheramie visited her grandmother's grave in a tree-lined cemetery where white concrete crosses dotted a plot of lush green grass just off Louisiana Highway 1.
Now, the cemetery in Leeville is a skeleton of its former self. The few trees still standing have been killed by saltwater intruding from the Gulf. Their leafless branches are suspended above marsh grass left brown and soggy from saltwater creeping up from beneath the graves.
"It was a beautiful place to visit," said Cheramie, 67, who lives in nearby Golden Meadow. "It hurts to see it now."
Dave Martin / AP
What's left of the old Leeville cemetery is only accessible by boat. Some headstones are barely visible above the water, and waves lap at the bricks and concrete surrounding caskets buried at the site since the late 1800s. Much of the ground has subsided to barely sea level, and during Hurricane Isaac, about seven feet of land washed away in the tidal surge.
Cheramie's small family graveyard is among at least two dozen cemeteries across the southeast Louisiana coast that are rapidly sinking or washing away because of erosion and subsidence accelerated by the tropical punch of storms such as Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike, Lee and Isaac.
Slideshow: Isaac makes landfall on the US Gulf Coast
Coastal Louisiana has lost about 1,900 square miles of land since the 1930s as canals dug for oil exploration allowed salty water to intrude into marshes and a succession of powerful hurricanes sucked marsh muck that protects populated areas out into the Gulf.
Dave Martin / AP
Windell Curole handles pieces of headstone at his small family cemetery which sits along the bayou near Leeville. Curole said saltwater from the Gulf is causing a crippling subsidence problem.
South Lafourche Levee District General Manager Windell Curole, who also serves on the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said saltwater from the Gulf is causing a crippling subsidence problem.
"We did not bury people in marshes," Curole said. "We buried them on high ground. This was high ground, and now it's subsided to the point of being wetlands and open water." Read the full story.
Editor's note: Images taken on Dec. 29, 2012 and made available to NBC News today.
Dave Martin / AP
Water washes around and against the tombs of those buried in a Leeville, La., cemetery.
E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS