MONDAY, June 16, (News Locale) - Contrary to popular belief recovery of the Ozone hole may not solve all global warming worries. In fact a new study says that mending the ozone hole may accelerate adverse effects of climate change. 

The study led by scientists from Columbia University found that if the ozone hole were to recover in the next 50 years as predicted it would affect the flow of winds called the westerlies around Antarctica. This change in the direction of the winds might play havoc with the existing models of climate in the Southern Hemisphere.

The westerlies are responsible for "locations of storms, dry zones and deserts, the ice and the ocean circulation as well as the carbon uptake of the oceans," study author Lorenzo Polvani, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University told Scientific American.

Repairing the ozone would cause these winds to shift their direction towards the equator and change the milieu of climate patterns in the Southern hemisphere in an adverse manner.

The study analyzed current climate models used by the International Panel on Climate Change to gauge consequences of global warming and then compared these models to those that predicted the chemical reactions in the stratosphere.

The hole in the ozone layer was discovered in 1985 and was traced to the ill effects of using chlorofluorcarbons (CFCs). In 1987 the Montreal Protocol banned these substances after which the hole is slowly recovering.

Most environmentalists had considered the recovery of ozone hole as a great success for mankind. If the above study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Science, is to be believed, then mending the gap may not be such a good thing after all.