Fireworks explode over Sydney Harbor during New Year's celebrations this morning. The yearly fireworks extravaganza over the city's landmark harbor bridge and opera house are the centerpiece of Australia's celebrations and generate some of the most striking images from a night of revelry across the globe.

PARIS — Paris jazzed up the Eiffel Tower with a multicolored, disco-style light display as the world basked in New Year’s festivities with hopes that 2010 and beyond will bring more peace and prosperity.

From fireworks over Sydney’s famous bridge to balloons sent aloft in Tokyo, revelers across the globe at least temporarily shelved worries about the future to bid farewell to “The Noughties.”

In New York City, hundreds of thousands of revelers gathered in chilly weather in Times Square to usher in the new decade. Organizers had prepared 3,000 pounds of confetti that would be scattered when the New Year’s Eve crystal ball dropped at midnight.

Not sad to see it go

Even as some major stock market indexes rose in 2009, the financial downturn hit hard, sending many industrial economies into recession, tossing millions out of work and out of their homes as foreclosures rose dramatically in some countries.

“The year that is ending has been difficult for everybody. No continent, no country, no sector has been spared,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on national TV in a New Year’s Eve address. “Even if the tests are unfinished, 2010 will be a year of renewal,” he added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned her people that the start of the new decade won’t herald immediate relief from the global economic ills. South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, was more ebullient, saying the World Cup is set to make 2010 the country’s most important year since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hailed events in 2009 like the inauguration of the United States’ first black president and international attempts to grapple with climate change.

“The great message from 2009 is that because we’ve been all in this together, we’ve all worked together,” Rudd said in a New Year’s message.

Hello, 2010!

Australia got the some of the festivities rolling, as Sydney draped its skies with explosive bursts of crimson, purple and blue to the delight of more than 1 million New Year’s revelers near the harbor bridge.

Spain rang in the start of its six-month presidency of the European Union with a sound and light show illuminating Sol square in Madrid and images from the 27 member states projected onto the central post office building.

In England, despite frigid temperatures, thousands gathered along the River Thames for fireworks that were fired from the London Eye attraction just as Big Ben struck midnight.

Europe and the Americas may have partied harder than Asia. Islamic countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan use a different calendar; China will mark the new year in February.