Australia celebrates the arrival of 2016
Sydney has welcomed 2016 in style with more than 1.6 million revellers flooding vantage points around the harbour to watch the spectacular midnight fireworks display, showcasing the iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House.
Synchronised to a soundtrack of some of 2015's biggest hits including Uptown Funk and Hold Back the River, the almost 15-minute fireworks show sent crowds in Sydney into rapturous cheers and applause.
The fireworks display that embraced Gadigal, Gamaragal and Wangal culture commenced with a Welcome to Country ceremony, SMH reported.
In Melbourne half a million people travelled to the CBD for the spectacle, which featured nearly 10 tonne of fireworks, its biggest display yet.
While more than 100,000 rang in the new year in Brisbane, an hour after the rest of the eastern states.
In Adelaide around 35,000 partygoers brought in the new year with fireworks, live music and entertainment at Elder Park.
Police reported generally good behaviour from millions of revellers.
New year around the globe
Shaken by a year of militant attacks, Europeans will ring in 2016 in subdued fashion, with soldiers on the streets of Paris, a heightened police presence at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, and silence across Moscow's Red Square.
In New York meanwhile, more than a million people are expected to crowd into Times Square under heavy security to celebrate the arrival of 2016 with the traditional dropping of the New Year's Eve crystal ball.
About 3000 police will be on duty across central London, with more armed officers in and around major stations, while security has been tightened for the traditional open-air concert in Rome.
Revellers pack NYC's Times Square
A crowd expected to swell to more than a million people has poured into New York City's Times Square under heavy security to celebrate the arrival of 2016 with the traditional dropping of the New Year's Eve crystal ball.
Hours before official festivities began at 6pm (local time), people from all over the world began to assemble in the famed Manhattan crossroads for an annual rite of winter that dates back to 1904.
With memories of the deadly attacks in Paris and California still fresh, police took extraordinary measures to ensure security at an event that has come to define the New York experience for many visitors to the largest US city.
"This is the centre of the world on New Year's Eve," said Rick Milley, 60, who travelled from Boston with his wife, Debbie, 59, to ring in the New Year in Times Square.
"This was on our bucket list," Debbie Milley said as the couple took pictures of themselves using a selfie stick.
The two have spent the holiday in New York before but never in Times Square, a year-round tourist draw, filled with chain stores, family restaurants and flashy advertising displays.
About 6000 uniformed and undercover police officers, 500 more than last year, were expected to flood the area, the force bolstered by mounted patrols, bomb-sniffing dogs, radiation detectors and hundreds of surveillance cameras.
The city for the first time was deploying its new Critical Response Command, which includes more heavily armed officers. The unit is trained to detect and respond to attacks, such those in Paris that killed 130 people on Nov. 13, or the rampage in San Bernardino, California, in which 14 were slain.
The US Department of Homeland Security has ranked the Times Square celebration as a level-2 concern on its five-point scale of security risks for major public events, a designation one step below the top-rated level-1 classification given Friday's Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.
Department officials have said they are unaware of any specific, credible threat to the Times Square gathering.
The New Year's Eve ball, which is 3.6 metres in diameter and weighs nearly six tonnes, descends on a pole mounted on top of One Times Square, a narrow wedge of a building along 42nd Street at the southern end of the square.
The descent starts at 11.59pm (1559 AEDT).
