Thermal diagnostics of the braided loops. We plot the DEM as a function of temperature for the SDO/AIA mean intensities derived from the braided loops (i.e., the black box on AIA panels in Fig. 2). The gray and black curves are computed at time-stamps overlaid on the plot. The vertical error bars correspond to 1σ errors in the DEM, while the horizontal bars indicate the energy resolution of the regularized inversion technique. See Appendix B for a discussion.