2001: the second warmest year on record?

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Statement

2001: the second warmest year on record?

2001 is claimed to be the second warmest year globally in 142 years of the surface temperature record: UK Met Office; Climatic Research Unit (CRU); World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). The former articles were provisional and 2001's claimed exceptional status has been repeated by the WMO's Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2001 (pdf document) This article states that global mean surface temperature was 0.42^o C above the 1961-1990 climatological normal in 2001, the second warmest year since global surface records began in 1861. Below is a summary of the section "Regional Temperatures Anomalies:

Annual temperatures

CANADA: 1.7^oC above normal - 3rd warmest since 1948

UNITED STATES: 6th warmest since 1907

FRANCE: 6th warmest since 1949

SWEDEN: 0.7^oCabove normal

NORWAY: 0.3 ^oC above normal

ICELAND: warmest since 1991

JAPAN: 12th warmest since 1898

EUROPE & MIDDLE EAST: generally warm - 1-2^oC above normal

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: cooler than average

Winter Temperatures

UNITES STATES: more than 1.0^oC below normal over large parts

RUSSIAN FEDERATION: more than 3.0^oC below over much of (BBC article)

ALASKA & YUKON: more than 5.0^oC above normal - warmest on record

THE WMO statement mentions not even one country which had its warmest or second warmest year on record in 2001 which is completely at variance with the claim that 2001 is the second warmest year globally in 142 years. Yet, the WMO states that 2001 was the warmest year on record in the northern hemisphere north of 20⁰ latitude with a temperature anomaly of 0.67^o C above average but apparently no countries in the northern hemisphere have temperature records to support this "earth-shattering" claim. Moreover, the section on Regional Temperature Anomalies begins by detailing the notable cold winter December 2000 to February 2001 in the United States and Russian Federation, both large areas of the globe. Record cold in December 2001 in Europe was omitted from the statement. The observations listed above and extracted from the WMO statement are simply inconsistent with the claim that 2001 was the second warmest year on record. Apart from Figure 1 in the WMO statement which shows above average sea surface temperatures over most oceans, no text is devoted to sea temperatures even though oceans comprise seventy per cent of the earth's surface.

WAS 2001 really the second warmest year globally in 142 years? The satellite record shows it to be only the ninth warmest year since records began in 1979 (i.e average). An explanation for these contradictory claims about global temperatures in 2001 may be that calculating global temperature from thousands of station records, many from urbanised areas which represent only 1 per cent of the earth's surface, is flawed and results in a warming trend. In contrast, satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere include sea and remote land areas where there are few or no station data, and the methodology is consistent across the whole globe.