Sydney's skyline erupted with fireworks as revellers cheered in the new year from the city's crammed harbour in the world's first major celebration for 2013.

The city's balmy summer night was rocked by seven tons of fireworks fired from roof tops and barges, many cascading from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in a £4 million pyrotechnic extravaganza billed by organisers as the world's largest. Pop singer Kylie Minogue hosted the event.

In Hong Kong, this year's fireworks display is said to be the biggest ever in the southern Chinese city.

The enthusiastic welcome to the new year continued on a grand scale across Asia. Increasingly democratic Burma held a public countdown for the first time, with Jakarta throwing a huge street party befitting Indonesia's powering economy.

The buoyant economies of the Asia-Pacific partied with renewed optimism despite the so-called fiscal cliff threatening to reverberate globally from the United States and the tattered economies of Europe.

One day after dancing in the snow to celebrate the first anniversary of leader Kim Jong Un's ascension to supreme commander, North Koreans were preparing to celebrate the arrival of the new year, marked as "Juche 102" on North Korean calendars.

Juche means self-reliance, the North Korean ideology of independence promoted by national founder Kim Il Sung, who was born 102 years ago. His grandson now rules North Korea.

Stateside, hundreds of thousands filled Times Square in New York to watch the drop of a Waterford crystal-studded ball.

Major cities across austerity-hit Europe also burned off part of their battered budgets in a string of spectacular fireworks displays, although some places – including the Cypriot capital, Nicosia – cancelled their celebrations in light of the continuing economic crisis.