Meteorological elements have different lag periods for solar activities (SA), climatic oscillation (CO) and other influencing factors at different spatiotemporal scales. To further understand the “solar-climate-water resource” system, this study considers China as the study area and investigates the monthly data of temperature (T) and precipitation (P) during 1900–2020 that were obtained from 3836 grid stations. The strong interaction and lag distribution between T or P with SA and CO were studied and influence weights of SA, CO, and geographical factors (GF) of each grid station were calculated. A multivariate hysteretic decomposition model was established to simulate and quantitatively decompose the periodic lag considering the factors of the earth’s revolution. The results indicate the existence of two dividing lines in the distribution of T and P lag periods. Additionally, the underlying surface conditions and urbanisation were observed to have significant effects on the periodic lag of meteorological elements.