Cold preincubation can accumulate docked, fusion-ready intermediates. On warming, that population proceeds promptly to lipid mixing, whereas newly combined vesicles must first encounter, dock and assemble productive SNARE complexes. This explains the faster initial rise and larger signal at the displayed endpoint without requiring a different total amount of fluorescent lipid.
The original reconstitution experiments likewise distinguish docking from subsequent membrane fusion.[ref]
SNAREpins: minimal machinery for membrane fusion by T. Weber and others. Docked unfused intermediates accumulated at low temperature and fused on warming