Description: Dusty cirrus clouds are extended optically thick cirrocumulus decks that occur during strong mineral dust events. So far, they have been mostly documented over Europe associated with dust-infused baroclinic storms. Since today's global operational numerical weather prediction models neither predict mineral dust distributions nor consider the interaction of dust with cloud microphysics, they cannot simulate this phenomenon. We have performed ICON-ART limited-area simulations with 2 km grid spacing to understand and predict the formation of dusty cirrus clouds. Based on these simulations, we postulate that the dusty cirrus forms through a mixing instability of moist clean air with drier dusty air. A corresponding sub-grid parameterization is suggested and tested in the ICON-ART model. Only with help of this special sub-grid parameterization ICON-ART is able to simulate the formation of the dusty cirrus, which leads to substantial improvements in cloud cover and radiative fluxes compared to simulations without this parameterization. A statistical evaluation over six Saharan dust events with and without observed dusty cirrus shows robust improvements in cloud and radiation scores. The ability to simulate dusty cirrus formation removes the linear dependency on mineral dust aerosol optical depth from the bias of the radiative fluxes. This suggests that the formation of dusty cirrus clouds is the dominant aerosol-cloud-radiation effect of mineral dust over Europe. At the IUGG we will present first simulations with the dusty cirrus parameterization in the global ICON-ART model and discuss the occurrence of dusty cirrus in Asia.