How to store multilayer data in R?

I have a dataset about climate models. They are currently stored in the list:

 $ ensemble   :List of 25
  ..$ run_name  :List of 2
  .. ..$ variable: num [1:72, 1:36, 1:12, 1:40] 255 256 256 257 257 ...

Where variableis the specific output of the model, for example, "surface temperature", with dimensions [lat, long, month, year](do not ask me why the output is not only for months ...)

This is not necessarily the best way to store this data, and I am wondering if there is an R-ish way to do this, which will facilitate the manipulation. In particular, I would like to see graphs of the average annual values ​​of each variable for all runs inside and the ensemble (i.e. one plot for each ensemble / variable, 25 lines) and statistics for each ensemble over a period of time (i.e. Moving PDF file) and possibly more complicated things later.

Ideally, I would like to avoid loops and use functions instead *apply. I tried this with this structure, but continue to run into walls, since I need to make up two functions in a call lapply()that doesn't work.