Dubai set a new Guinness World Record for the largest fireworks display as part of the city's New Year's Eve celebrations.
Dubai has set a new Guinness World Record for the largest fireworks display ever seen as the emirate saw in the New Year - although the spectacular event was delayed until 20 minutes after midnight.
Ten months in planning, over 500,000 fireworks were used during the display which lasted around six minutes, with Guinness World Records adjudicators on hand to confirm that a new record had been set.
Covering a distance of over 94km (61.6 miles) of the city’s seafront, the display incorporated some of Dubai’s top landmarks, including Palm Jumeirah, World Islands, the Burj Khalifa and Burj Al Arab.
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The spectacle’s final salvo of fireworks created an artificial “sunrise” along the seafront, with the highest fireworks reaching more than one kilometre in height.
Organisers had been aiming to beat a record set in 2012 during a display to mark Kuwait’s golden jubilee anniversary which saw a total of 77,282 fireworks launched.
Dubai's attempt broke that benchmark by some margin, with enough fireworks launched within the first minute of the display alone to surpass the previous record.
What has now goes down as the biggest bang in the history of pyrotechnics was designed by U.S. firm Fireworks by Grucci.
The performance used 100 computers to synchronise the pyrotechnics, along with a choreographed musical soundtrack.
In the build up to the event, more than 200 expert technicians worked 5,000 man hours to ensure that the fireworks’ timing was accurate down to the millisecond.
Separately, New Year's Eve Gala celebrations also took place in Downtown Dubai, organised by Emaar Properties.
The spectacular fireworks display at Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, attracted more than a million visitors, and featured 10 never-before-seen fireworks acts.
The New Year’s celebration was streamed live on YouTube reaching millions of online audiences in real time.
Elsewhere, exploding fireworks sprayed from the sails of the Sydney Opera House and the Australian city’s harbour bridge at midnight as the world ushered in a new year.
More than one million people crammed the Sydney Harbour foreshore on a warm summer night to watch the pyrotechnics show that appeared to live up to its billing as the most extravagant of Sydney’s already renowned annual display.
Closer to the edge of the International Dateline, New Zealand bid farewell to 2013 two hours before Sydney with fireworks erupting from Auckland’s Sky Tower as cheering revellers danced in the streets of the South Pacific island nation’s largest city.
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