White butterflies are filling Johannesburg's skies earlier than usual. Climate change is to blame

By Jennifer Fitchett, Associate Professor of Physical Geography, University of the Witwatersrand

Each year around mid-summer, somewhere between December and mid-January, the skies of South Africa’s Gauteng province, including the city of Johannesburg, fill with small white butterflies. Some land in people’s gardens, allowing a closer look at the thin brown markings on their wings. Those markings give the butterflies their name: the brown-veined white butterfly (Benenois aurota).

Their annual migration takes between 80,000 and 155,000 butterflies per hour from South Africa’s Kalahari…

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