RNetCDF provides an R interface to the NetCDF file format designed by Unidata for efficient storage of array-oriented scientific data and descriptions. This R interface is closely based on the C API of the NetCDF4 library, and it includes calendar conversions from the Unidata UDUNITS2 library.
An introduction to the RNetCDF package is given in http://journal.r-project.org/archive/2013-2/michna-woods.pdf .