New Year’s celebrations are underway around the world, with firework displays in Auckland and Sydney starting a night of global partying.

Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean was the first to welcome in 2009 at 10am Greenwich Mean Time. before the New Year arrived in New Zealand an hour later.

Auckland’s dazzling firework show, launched from the Sky Tower in the centre of the city, was broadcast around the world in a prelude to the enormous pyrotechnic display in Sydney Harbour two hours later.

A record crowd gathered in the Australian city to watch Sydney’s biggest fireworks display yet. Around 5,000 kilograms of shells, comets and experimental fireworks lit up the sky over the Opera House and the iconic steel bridge, which dominate the city’s harbour.

Fortunato Foti, the fireworks director, said: “It’s probably 30 per cent bigger on the bridge alone than what it’s been in previous years. Personally, I don’t think you can have too many fireworks. The more the better."

The show cost an estimated five million Australian dollars (£2.4 million) with thousands of the city’s four million residents queuing for harbourside spots some 12 hours before the main event. Police estimated that up to 1.5 million people watched the spectacle.

Jessica Williams, 29, a British tourist said New Year’s Eve in Sydney was world-renowned. “Coming from overseas you’ve kind of got to do the whole Sydney and fireworks thing,” she said. “It was a great experience."

A similar event will be held on the Thames in London tonight, although the temperatures will be rather different to the balmy summer's night in Australia. Forecasters are predicting the coldest New Year’s Eve in Britain for more than a decade.

The Met Office warned those who do venture outside to wrap up well in readiness for a return to the deep freeze of a few weeks ago, during the coldest start to December since the mid 1990s.

Temperatures could drop to minus 6C (21F) in parts of Scotland and minus 4C (25F) in England. “Many parts will be below zero and very frosty. It’s a big contrast to the milder weather we’ve had in the past five years or so,” a Met Office spokesman said.

Up to half a million people are expected to gather in Central London nonetheless for a £1.6 million party on the banks of the Thames.

In Edinburgh, a record 20,000 people took part in the annual torchlight procession last night as the city prepares for its Hogmanay party tonight.

In Dubai, however, opulent multimillion-pound New Year's Eve celebrations have been cancelled due to the Gaza violence, leaving hordes of expatriates hastily making alternative plans.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of the Gulf state, called off festivities late last night.

He said "all public New Year’s celebrations" should be stopped "in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who are currently enduring death, suffering and destruction in Gaza".

The city, home to thousands of Western expatriate businesspeople and tourists, usually holds spectacular public firework displays and open-air entertainments worth millions.

British and other foreigners living in the city were today planning alternative celebrations. Hotels were said to be holding revised indoor entertainments, but any outdoor elements would be called off.

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