This study developed a novel approach to detect what rainfall rates climatologically are most efficient for wet removal of different aerosol types and applied it to a global climate model (GCM). Results show that light rain has disproportionate control on aerosol wet scavenging, with distinct rain rates for different aerosol sizes. The approach can be applied to other GCMs to better understand the aerosol wet scavenging by rainfall, which is important to better simulate aerosols.