  In this paper, we present a joint cross-correlation analysis of the Archeops
CMB maps at 143 and 217 GHz and the WMAP CMB maps at 41, 61 and 94 GHz with sky
templates of projected galaxy density constructed from the 2MASS Extended
Source catalog. These templates have been divided in patches sorted in
decreasing galaxy density with a fixed number of pixels (we considered patches
having 32, 64 and 128 pixels) and the cross correlation has been performed
independently for each of these patches. We find that the densest patch shows a
strong temperature decrement in the Q, V, W bands of WMAP and in the 143 GHz
channel of Archeops, but not in the 217 GHz channel. Furthermore, we find that
the spectral behavior of the amplitude of this decrement is compatible with
that expected for the non-relativistic thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, and
is incompatible (at 4.5 sigma level) with the null hypothesis of having only
CMB, noise and a dust component (nu^2) in those pixels. We find that the first
32-pixel sized patch samples the cores of 11 known massive nearby galaxy
clusters. Under the assumption that the decrement found in this patch is due
entirely to the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, we obtain an average
comptonization parameter for those sources of y = (0.41 +- 0.08) x 10^(-4) at
13 arcmin angular scales. This value is compatible at 1 sigma with the
expectation, y = 0.49 x 10^(-4), from a model of the cluster flux number counts
based on the standard Lambda-CDM cosmology. The observed value of y is slightly
diluted when computed for the first patch of 64 and 128 pixels, presumably due
to the inclusion of less massive clusters, and the dilution factor inferred is
also compatible with the quoted model.
